


To Unspool the Secrets of Our Selves

by Val Mora (valmora)



Series: weaving 'verse [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Arranged Marriage, Electromagnetism, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Interspecies Relationships, Jotun!Loki, Other, Premarital Sex, hermaphroditic character, high-temperature superconductors, pseudoscientific babble, single-sex jotun, textile/magic metaphors, the universe does not actually taste like raspberries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:41:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every summer since eir second century ey has been in Asgard, sweltering, called <i>he</i> or <i>she</i>, eir weaving-skills treated as though weak and cowardly.  Loki has no fondness for the Æsir, eir betrothed's people, but ey is not so honorless as to condemn Jotunheim again to war for eir own freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this prompt](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/6420.html?thread=11840276#t11840276) at the Thor kink meme. Vaguely. Barely.
> 
> Since I figure a society that doesn't have sexes isn't likely to have gendered pronouns and I don't believe that the word "he" is really gender-neutral, Loki should be (except for any typos, and if you see any let me know) consistently referred to using gender-neutral pronouns.
> 
> I have been influenced by several authors, most obviously Llanval (Eidolon), godofpancakes (Dinerverse), and Aria (Shatter). There are some passages that are reminiscent of parts of circa1220bce's "magic, lost and found," but this fic was written before those chapters were posted, so any resemblance is merely a result of fandom zeitgeist.
> 
> Loki's fighting style is highly influenced by aikido, because it's useful for people who aren't as physically strong as they expect their opponents to be.
> 
> I will be the first to say I am not trained in physics, and thus there are likely errors of scientific accuracy. I tried, but I do welcome feedback on how to make it better.
> 
> I based the midsummer fresh rye bread on US rye harvest periods from a government document.
> 
> Penultimately, thanks to peridium for hand-holding, flailing with me, and letting me bounce ideas around; to lingy, for looking over the gender issues (any remaining problems are my own fault); and to Sunny, for giving it the read-over it needed.
> 
> Lastly: If I've fucked up the genderqueerness, let me know and I'll do my best to fix it.

Spring in Jotunheim is shallow: a thinning of ice, the sun a little brighter in the sky. The river Ifing, flowing between Jotunheim and all the worlds, swells with star-melt, and ripples in the solar wind of a thousand-million suns.

On the solstice, the Rainbow Bridge, refracted light and energy made solid, grows across the Ifing from the summer-land of Asgard, and Loki, second-born of the throne of Jotunheim, sets foot upon it for to go to eir betrothed.

+++

The peace will hold as long as Jotunheim yields. Asgard is a land of brawn and dominance; it cannot countenance equality with other lands. With creatures wrought of ice, sea-salt, iron-stone. It divides itself, its people, too: where a Jotun's deeds speak all, Asgard silences half its people, bars them from all action and all merit, and denies the value of the things they do.

Loki did not understand, when first ey came to Asgard to see eir future-spouse, that to be called _girl_ was an insult. Ey is offended now, if only that the term is wrong. Jotun have neither _girls_ nor _boys_ , only children. To bear a child of one's body is honor; to raise a child well is honor; to serve one's ruler and one's family is honor. Loki is no boy, nor girl.

It is foolish that Asgardians must have men on the throne, since no man may bear a child: how can they show true lineage? Would not a woman-ruler, heir brought forth from her own body, hesitate the longer to declare war, knowing the cost in her own flesh?

The Rainbow Bridge moves those upon it quickly, but the distance between the worlds is long. There is enough time to become resigned once more. Loki has spent near five hundred summers in Asgard, since the visits began after eir second century. Only fifteen left before the wedding, and then Loki will know no winter but eir own skin.

+++

Thor and his retinue, four skilled warriors, are waiting at the other end; they stand in dress armor, to show respect to Loki as the second-born of Laufey of Jotunheim. Loki bows to Thor, one hand laid over a fist, and Thor returns it, a gesture of respect foreign to them both. The Jotun exchange kisses to the forehead between friends and equals, while the men among the Æsir clasp forearms to show their hands empty of weapons, but Loki's bare skin would leave black-frost marks upon Thor's, and so they do not touch.

Part of the wedding ceremony will be Æsir sorcerers binding away the frost of Loki's touch, and Loki fears that Thor's heat will consume em when they lie together afterwards.

Loki thinks sometimes that ey will melt to water in the ever-summer of Asgard, has had dreams of it. Becoming liquid-boneless beneath Thor's body, seeing only reflections, hearing only echoes. It is, of course, illogical: Loki is no weeping water-bride, and bears in eir sinews the power to make blades of ice, to fight with them. Even far from the shaded snows of Jotunheim, if given water, Loki can fashion eir own weapons.

Too, Loki emself is a weapon: a sorcerer, seiðr-worker, spell-spinner. Any garment is a weapon in the making, and any blade is a distaff; Loki's teacher keeps as eir distaff the bone of some long-dead beast, near tall as a child of four hundred years, worn thin by the weavings of the centuries. 

Loki's distaff is not so mighty as that: a seiðr-worker's staff is an item of power, and the wrong one will foul spells. Until the day ey finds eir own, Loki carries one of ash, a gift from eir sibling Helblindi, and bears it always.

"I bid you welcome to Asgard, Loki Laufeysbairn," Thor says, mouth curling around the words. His beard, last summer thin and unbecoming, has grown heavier now, a great change for such a short time.

"I am grateful for your hospitality, Thor Odinson," Loki answers, right hand falling once more to eir distaff, sheathed at eir hip in the same manner as many of the Æsir wear their swords, though on the other side.

Thor's eyes follow the movement. "It will please my mother to see you," he says. "What witch-women do in the weaving chambers is no business of a man, but I am glad at least that you love each other well."

Loki curls eir hand around the swell of the end of eir distaff. "That the heir of Göndlir does not learn the methods of seiðr-workers is no shame upon the weavers," ey says. 

Thor's shoulders tense, but before he can speak, his companion Sif's hand is upon his shoulder.

"The remark was not without warrant," she murmurs to him, as though Jotun hearing were not far better than that of all the Æsir but the Nine-Born, and Thor subsides.

"I will escort you to my mother's weaving chambers," he says instead, beginning to offer his arm, then cuts the gesture short, his hand dropping to the sword at his hip.

Loki thinks of curling eir fingers in Thor's elbow, as Frigga does with Odin, but instead falls into step beside him.

+++

Frigga greets em with a kiss just over eir forehead, close enough that Frigga's breath streams fog-white between them and Loki can feel her warmth, and Loki returns the gesture, leaving a crystal shining of frost melting against Frigga's golden skin. They understand each other as seiðr-workers, though Frigga's weavings are great tapestries of fate and lineage, while Loki prefers to tie knots where a less-gifted Jotun might wield ice, or an Æsir iron.

Someday, Loki will learn to weave as Frigga does. To the Jotun, Frigga's seiðr is the weaving of an adult, one who holds eir own house, has borne children. Even if ey studied it, Loki would have no skill in that art, not yet. 

Not _yet_ , not until eir belly is full, heavy as the moon with Thor's get.

"I have missed you," Loki says to Frigga, and it is no lie.

+++

Frigga soon takes Loki to eir quarters within the palace, for the journey on the Bifrost is long enough to have left Loki tired, and so they rest and prepare for dinner with the court of Asgard.

At dinner, Loki is seated at Frigga's left, a slight if ever there were one, but it is politic: Thor is not yet ruler, and he and Loki are not yet married. That the Æsir view Jotun Loki, whose greater strength is seiðr, as a woman, is a failing of their own culture. Loki is neither man nor woman, capable both of bearing and of giving children, but eir strength in sorcery is too unmanly for the Æsir to see eir match with Thor as honorable without a denial of eir strangeness.

They have a horror of womanliness, the Æsir.

Across the table, Thor makes some jest to his companions, and Sif – lovely warrior-woman Sif, accepted only because she has given up any womanish ways she may have had, and is that not a shame, to have repressed whatever else she may have wanted in order to gain the thing she wanted most? – Sif smiles, and Thor lays a hand upon her forearm, as Fandral does to those he courts.

Sif does not pull her arm away from his touch.

Loki, one hand beneath the table, ties a knot in one of the cords hanging from eir distaff-sheath. Exhales out the frozen jealous rage, and finds it growing still. Ties another, whispering a spell into eir dinner, for stomach-ease.

The Æsir insistence upon male rule, and control of the women's bearing, makes them fearful. Men are free to bed whom they will, so long as it is only women, within or without marriage; but the fruit of a woman's body belongs to the man that gave it to her, and so they prefer their brides virgin, to ensure emptiness, in the hopes of guaranteed paternity.

The Jotun bear their own children, and Loki, Jotun-born and Jotun-bred, does not see why ey should be innocent of sex if Thor is not. So ey is childless, but has known the embrace of winter nights, and has given three children to a seiðr-worker in the woven-iron grove far to the west of Laufey's palace. It is a great honor to be allowed to give children to such a weaver.

Thor will see it as an act of subjugation, giving Loki children.

The warrior at Loki's left is old enough to remember the war as eir generation does not, and he is coldly courteous. Loki's hands itch with wanting to make him laugh, or failing that, turn him red with embarrassment and frustrated rage.

Would Thor laugh? He would have, once, during the brief half-century of truce when they were on the cusp of puberty. Awkward in their bodies, spells coming easy to Loki's hands with the ripening of eir fertility, the both of them growing taller and broader in the chest, muscles swelling under Thor's skin with the sweat of his training. But those summers are long ago now, closed to them after centuries of unkind awkwardness.

Loki curls eir mouth around a weaving-song of illusion, to turn the meat on eir neighbor's plate to smelling rotten, then unspoilt, again, but ey does not do it. That is an old jest, and no longer amuses. 

The meal lasts long into the night, though it formally adjourns not long after Frigga and Odin depart. Loki stays, for a time, thinking to work some yet-untried prank, but can think of nothing that would not end with Thor's rage hot between them, keeping to words only because Thor thinks em tantamount to a woman and therefore unsuitable challenge.

Someday Loki will join him in battle, and show who is the greater challenge. But after they are wed. Thor knows em to be a seiðr-worker, of course; that was a part of why Loki was chosen for betrothal, rather than Helblindi. Odin assumes that making Asgard into Loki's spouse-home will keep em from taking up weaving against it.

Not foolishness entire, that, but Loki and eir weaving are not viewed with fellow-feeling here, and the reservations are mutual. Loki does not wish the Æsir dead, but ey does like to see them dance with harmless pain and bluster with impotent rage. 

Loki rises, making eir excuses to the warrior at eir side, and goes to the weaving rooms.

There is one woman there, young, unmarried by her hair. She is spinning thread, and goes pale and strange when she sees Loki in the doorway, blue as moonlit sky.

Loki takes up an iron spindle and begins to make thread, occasionally breathing warmth into eir hands so as not to make the flax unworkable.

"It's late for you to be spinning," Loki says finally, and is mildly pleased when the girl jerks at the sound of eir voice.

"It – it is, is it not." More silence. Loki continues spinning. This could be done with seiðr, of course, but what would be the point? Magic upon magic in such a way decreases the efficacy of the final weaving. Better to make thread oneself, with one's own hands.

"What are you waiting for?"

The girl's mouth opens, closes. "...I am weak, in seiðr," she says finally.

"Not all gifts are given in equal measure to all," Loki says.

Her hands slow, then go still, catching the spindle so that the thread will not unwind. "I worry that it is a sign I will never bear children."

Loki's heart clenches. The greatest curse that any Jotun seiðr-worker may weave is that of barrenness, and is crueler even than death. It steals the gift of children, and the future of the cursed one's home.

"Being barren would not make your seiðr weak," Loki says. "The All-Father, after all..." 

The girl pauses, frowns, turns to Loki. "You name the King _argr_?"

"I name him seiðr-worker, and that is true enough."

They are both silent for long moments, and in the meantime Loki finishes eir bundle of flax. As sure a sign as any to leave the weaving chamber, and go elsewhere, perhaps to bed.

+++

In the morning, the warriors practice, and Loki goes to watch. Thor is movement and force, a war-weaving left uncontrolled. Sif is the more beautiful fighter of the two, and probably the better, though Thor's greater strength and weight force her into evasion rather than the clashing counterattacks favored among the Æsir. She will always be called slight, and fond of dodging, the whisper of _weak_ beneath the spoken words.

Loki, at least, is valued in eir homeland, and has learned to appreciate it after all the centuries of summers in Asgard.

Volstagg has the strength to fight Thor, but little of Thor's speed and reach; Fandral has finesse but insufficient strength. Hogun evades, almost as Sif does, but he has the weight and muscle to force what Sif must win by grace and cleverness alone.

Loki sets aside eir spindle by the many racks of weapons and begins to strip down to fighting-clothes.

One of the warriors stretching by the sidelines says, "Milady –!"

"Throne-Child," Loki corrects, savagely, "and if you attempt to stop me I will treat it as a challenge."

The warrior does, of course, because he thinks Loki womanly and unfit for battle. Loki dances around him, presses close to his back, slides a blade of ice along his throat before dropping him to the ground unharmed.

The dirt of the practice ring goes hard and cold beneath Loki's bare feet, the few blades of grass shattering under eir weight.

One of the Æsir warriors sees Loki first, and falls still; Thor turns, eyes widening, the sword in his hand dropping from guard, and says, "Loki."

"Odinson." Ice is too brittle for long blades, so Loki forms one dagger, then another, in eir hands.

"You would spar with me?" Thor's face is open, disbelieving. He has never seen Loki fight in the Jotun manner, though he has seen enough of Loki's magic and pranks to know a shadow of that truth.

"I would."

"I have no wish to harm you."

Loki smiles. "As I am sure you could. Spar with me, betrothed."

Thor's eyes skid down Loki's half-clothed body, and his cheeks redden. Perhaps Thor is embarrassed by Loki's dishabille, or perhaps he thinks of the passion of fighting: the physical closeness, the allure of violence. Loki knows well enough that the siblinghood of warriors often extends from the practice field to the bed.

Should this match inflame Thor's passions, so be it.

Thor's grasp on his sword loosens further. "I cannot."

Loki does not stop. "You cannot."

"It would be wrong to force such discord into our betrothal," Thor says, and bows. "I am sorry."

Loki's belly tightens with anger and shame. "You do me no honor with this."

"Your gift is sorcery," Thor says, "and I would not ask combat of you when I know it is not your strength."

"What do you know of my strength?" Loki asks, stepping along the inside line of the circle, walking sunwise around Thor. "Have you seen me in the training fields of Jotunheim? Have you heard that I am cowardly, too weak to see to my own defense?"

Thor turns with Loki's movements. The dust of the practice ring crunches beneath his boots. "No."

"Then you must fear this challenge."

"I do _not_ ," Thor growls, just as Loki completes the third sunwise turn around the circle and ties a final knot in the rope at eir hip, casting the spell that will make eir touch safe for Æsir skin.

"It is no shame if you do; you Æsir have a great fear even of allied sorcerers." Loki takes a step forward, off the border of the sparring circle. "It will be meet, if you come to our marriage bed fearing my strength."

Thor's face is red, grip on his sword tight. "You taunt me."

"You have shamed yourself in refusing," Loki says. The dust of the ring clings to eir skin, no longer frozen-cold. "It's only sparring, Odinson, not our wedding night."

Again, that glance down Loki's body, and two of the warriors behind them chuckle. Thor is no less annoyed than he was, but now his honor as spouse-to-be is pricked, and Loki can feel him wavering, tilting, tipping into willingness for this fight.

"Let us, then," Thor says, and raises his blade.

He is, truly, a fine warrior, and their reach is mismatched.

So Loki closes the distance between them. Slides a hand onto the hilt of Thor's blade, brings all their hands up, around, their bodies twisting in a circle together, and then the blade is in Loki's hands, Thor disarmed, an ice-dagger melting on the ground between them.

Thor bends without looking away from Loki and takes up the dagger, wincing at its chill against his fingers, the cold wetness of its grip, made for Loki's thinner fingers.

Loki holds, waits, paces slowly, the sword at the ready. It is heavier than ey would have chosen for emself, but the balance is good. 

Thor's mouth is open, his eyes wide with readiness. "Have at, Laufeysbairn," he says, "Never let it be said that Thor Odinson was afraid of a fair match."

"I wouldn't slander my betrothed so," Loki says, the words salt-sharp on eir tongue. Thor's face does not shift with recognition.

The match is more even with Loki's reach extended by the weapon, and they spar for a time, Thor using the knives to guide the sword away, and Loki keeping him at arm's length with the reach of the blade, until Thor closes the distance, his weight slamming Loki to the ground. Thor is still standing, the reclaimed blade now in his hands, pointed at Loki's throat. 

"I yield," Loki says. Thor pulls the sword away, then resheathes it. Loki's back aches from holding the too-heavy weapon.

"It was a good match," Thor says, reaching towards em but then checking himself. Loki bows faintly before leaving the circle to gather up eir clothes and eir distaff.

+++

Thor comes to em, that night in the library after dinner. The soles of his boots click against the wooden floor, his clothes rustling as he moves, searching for Loki.

Loki allows emself to be found. It does not take long. Thor has had practice in discovering Loki's favorite hiding places, though if asked Loki would deny that ey hides at all, this close to full adulthood.

Thor leans against the table, where Loki has spelled some tomes into cold-resistance and is reading a text on the folk dances of a small sub-group of Dwarves who live in the far-deep mining caverns.

"I wished to tell you I think it well that we sparred today," Thor says.

"I see," Loki says. Eir skin still crackles with ice from eir post-sparring bath, a rime of frost cool and refreshing against the tips of eir ears, curling at the back of eir neck, in the hollows of eir knees.

"No silver words to chide me for not having agreed at once?" Thor jibes.

"I am content merely with having been in the right." Loki licks a finger and turns the page, mostly for show. The following page has a diagram of the pattern the dancers must take, not well-drawn. The printing plates must have been custom-made, and clumsily done. "It bothers me not that you won the match." 

Thor's smirk widens into a leer. "That is well, as you will be losing to me for many summers yet." 

Loki smiles, lips closed. "You forget that I used no magic in the ring but that which protected you from my touch."

"It was honorably fought," Thor says, clearly understanding not at all, for his view of honor has no place for seiðr, that Æsir-woman's art.

Loki turns back to eir book, tracing the lines of the dance with one finger, and Thor falls silent, for a time, at least.

+++

Loki does not return to the practice field the next day, but instead watches in the stands, and speaks with the Lady Sif, who watches matches when she is not sparring herself. 

"If I were of a height to other Jotun," Loki says, "I would show these warriors combat. I think you are placed best to teach them how to fight an opponent of greater size and strength."

Sif nods. "Though now that you are with us, there will be peace as long as the marriage lasts, and as long as your children remember respect for the Children of the Ice."

Loki spreads eir hands over eir knees. _I am unsure of that respect_ , ey does not say. "It will not please Asgard's great families, nor the Einherjar, to bend the knee to a half-Jotun whelp. Were I among the nobles here, I would wait for Thor to have a by-blow, and name it the true successor."

Sif's mouth tightens, but she does not contradict em.

+++

During the feast, Thor wraps an arm about Sif's shoulders, speaks to her in a low, familiar way, their faces close together. Intimate. He does not touch Fandral, Volstagg, or Hogun so. 

Loki leaves the meal early, and leaves sheets of ice upon the walls where ey touches them, at least until a serving-maid shrieks and cries, "Throne-Child Loki!" in frightened recognition. Then Loki merely leaves stains of clear-ice upon the floor, the better for unwitting Æsir to slip and fall as they stumble drunkenly to their own rooms. 

Loki is not here to show that the Jotun are _kind_.

__+++_ _

Loki has been making eir fun at the expense of hapless Æsir since ey realized, near eir third century, that Thor had little interest in being something so boring as _friends_ with his betrothed. Loki was too cold to touch and complained of heat all the time, and Thor had friends who were in Asgard year-round who shared his taste for physical roughness.

Loki went to Frigga's weaving rooms, after that, and perhaps ey looked back, but not for long. Seiðr in its full measure is impossible for Jotun who have borne no children, but there are those who may wield its lesser forms once they have opened their bodies to another, and others yet who know it from the onset of fertility. Loki was younger than any of that, a powerful rare gift indeed among eir people.

Æsir women with the gift for seiðr are born with it, and grow stronger with fertility and children.

__Loki has wondered, at times, if eir giving-parent was an Æsir, but that is foolishness. Laufey would have killed a forced-child in eir belly, as most forced Jotun did after the war. There are a few half-blood brats who are thralls in lesser fiefs, their skin marked as the Jotun and shaded frost-blue against the thickness of Æsir flesh. They summon ice-blades and have pale-fleshed eyes. They are not well loved, those unwanted poisoned gifts._ _

__Loki's children will be such._ _

__+++_ _

__There are repercussions from eir jest, of course. Loki, called to punishment, goes to Odin All-Father, the bearer of wands and a great seiðr-worker, and kneels before the throne of Asgard._ _

__"Throne-Child Loki," Odin says._ _

__Loki does not speak._ _

__"You caused a serving woman to fall and sprain her knee, last night," the All-Father says._ _

__"I didn't mean to injure," Loki says, half a lie. Pride is no part of the body, and hurts worse than any flesh wound._ _

__"You never do. As this is only the first such deed of the summer, I will merely warn you, as I have not before done: a second jest like that, and you shall work in the city cold-house."_ _

__As though ey were a laborer, despite the appeal of escaping the eternal heat of Asgard. Loki draws emself up. "I am the child of a throne."_ _

__"And behave without the responsibility of one," the All-Father snaps. "The people of Asgard will be your people, in fifteen years; you would do well to think more deeply on what it would mean to make them hate you."_ _

Loki bites eir tongue against sharp rage, wanting to say, _I will remain here despite your people's hatred because I cannot stay at home without causing war, but I will make you remember that this match was not my choice, nor my parent's._

__The longest game their kind may play, this: their lives, the lives of their children, the lives of their people. Laufey will pay with eir second-born to save Jotunheim and its children from war, and Loki knows eir freedom cheap indeed against the lives of a thousand, a thousand thousand children and parents._ _

__"I shall behave in a manner more pleasing to you, then," Loki says, and waits to be dismissed._ _

__+++_ _

__Thor and Sif do not touch at the evening feast beyond Sif punching Thor's arm at some jest and Thor nudging her with his shoulder, a sly reminder in the midst of some tale._ _

__Loki quiets emself and goes to the gate-chamber of the Rainbow Bridge. There is a caravan traveling to somewhere, Alfheim perhaps, by the merchant house crests on the sides of the wagons. The travels of planets stretch the bridge's light into numberless colors, some visible only as noise._ _

__"You are not meant to be here," says Heimdall, the ever-watching one._ _

__"I would return home," Loki says._ _

__"It will bring war."_ _

__Loki sits on the steps of the dais leading up to the great key-hole that opens the bridge. "And that is why I am still here."_ _

__Ey learned from Angrboða that there are other ways between places: to become specks of light, or more than light, and make oneself a needle passing through the cloth of all the worlds. Loki tried, once, and could not do so safely. Come the consummation of eir marriage, the distance between stars will be no barrier to em, but until that day there is only the bridge, and other weavers' skills._ _

__Heimdall lets em watch the caravan's departure, at least. His blade, the key to the great workings of the bridge, is a kind of seiðr-potent star-metal, one that even the great smiths of Alfheim cannot imitate despite their metal-sprites and clever tools. There is little of it in Asgard, and less yet in Jotunheim, though the Jotun know its type well, and the cold of Jotunheim allows them substitutes. Heimdall's blade may represent nearly all of it that is known._ _

__In Jotunheim, seiðr-workers full in their power embed wires of its colder cousins into their skin, to act as both augment and protection. Loki fully intends to wear them as well, though they will not work with eir skin heated to Æsir-safeness._ _

__There will be a strange delight in returning to eir parent-home for the first time since eir wedding with eir skin dark-ridged by seiðr-wire, hands full of glowing power, the Bifrost of no use to em._ _

__"When I am Consort, I think I will return to Jotunheim in summer," Loki says, meaninglessly. Heimdall does not reply. It is a foolish thought anyhow; Loki has every intention of becoming pregnant as soon after the wedding as possible, and world-travel is not good for the unborn. Perhaps after the second child. The Æsir like for there to be two potential heirs, in case one should die, or go mad with battle-rage. Thor himself has a younger sibling, strange and quiet, but strong, and as keen to battle as to his books. Unbetrothed, to Æsir or otherwise. Loki mistrusts him. If ey were second-born to an Æsir-wed first-, ey would scheme to take the throne from the legitimate half-blood heirs emself._ _

__After the caravan finishes its journey, Heimdall locks the Bifrost shut once more._ _

__+++_ _

__At dinner, Loki sits counter to propriety, at Thor's right hand, where Sif would usually be. Hogun, sharp-faced, takes Loki's usual place near Frigga._ _

__Thor speaks across the table to Hogun, speaks past Loki at Volstagg, yells down behind em to speak to Fandral and Sif. Loki does not ask for his attention, and he does not give it._ _

__Loki makes polite, uneasy conversation with Volstagg, and feels the burn of Thor's strength and heat at eir side. It is uncomfortable, more so even than the over-warmth of the room. Loki does not eat much. Ey never does, while in Asgard, for all that the Æsir and Jotun diets are close enough to make do._ _

__Afterwards, ey goes to the indoor weapons-practice halls, where ey frightens off all the Einherjar by taking out a purely mundane staff, icing it over, and practicing strikes with it. Loki does wish to be found, after all, and Thor is perfectly obliging, and perfectly discontent. He opens the door with sharp clicks of the latch, and halts some ten steps from Loki, though if he is disconcerted by Loki holding a weapon he does not show it._ _

__Loki isn't sure if it's because Thor believes Loki will not attack him, or if he believes himself quick and strong enough to defend against it._ _

__"I didn't expect you at this hour," Loki says, fully truthful. Ey expected Thor here much earlier._ _

__"Why did you not sit with my mother, in your customary place?"_ _

__"I wished to speak to someone else for once."_ _

__Thor's shoulders tighten. "The place you took is Sif's."_ _

__Loki leans harder on the staff planted to the aged wood beneath eir feet. "I will not be sorry for displacing your favorite." Sif would not indulge so, Loki thinks, but Thor's heart is large, and indiscreet._ _

__"What?"_ _

__"I cannot blame the woman who gives in to the attentions of the Prince of Asgard. She, after all, must serve the crown." Loki's breath drifts as cold smoke on the air._ _

__Thor's weight shifts, knees bending slightly, half-ready for a fight. "You accuse me of dishonor."_ _

__"Do I?" Loki asks. "Tell me that you have not lain carelessly with women, and will not, once married. Tell me that being Odinson does not make women fall the more easily into your bed."_ _

__Thor is silent._ _

__Loki melts the ice on the staff and puts it away, then takes up some throwing knives._ _

__"You are between me and the targets," Loki says. It is the opposite._ _

__Thor sits on a bench in the corner and does not leave until Loki does, nearly an hour later._ _

__+++_ _

__For the rest of the summer, Loki weaves. Were ey already full in eir power, a proper wedding-gift would be some sort of cloth, blankets for the marital bed most likely. Angrboða still uses eirs, though eir spouse and older children died in the war._ _

__No, Loki weaves for emself. Working spells for silence, shadows, brightness, inattention, into the cloth. The threads are all white, and that is how Loki sees them, but the women in the weaving chambers tell em that it is a lovely shade of blue, or green, or red. A thousand different colors, vibrating with the viewer's intentions. Loki made a similar piece for Býleistr, before Býleistr went to all the fiefs of Jotunheim as new-crowned Heir._ _

__Loki finishes it off two days before Midsummer. Ey ties it off, pulls it off the loom, finishes the edges. Folds it up, with the help of some women weavers._ _

__The moment ey is out the door of the weaving chambers, ey wraps it around emself, a makeshift hiding-cloak, and walks through the palace unnoticed._ _

__+++_ _

__At the Midsummer celebrations, the strongest, most able warriors dance before the bonfire, wearing animals skins and carrying swords. Thor is among them, skin burnished by the fire, sweat trailing down his skin. Hogun and Fandral are at his sides, and Volstagg and Sif, her breasts bound up with linen, dance beside them in turn, with others whose names Loki does not know as well behind them._ _

__Loki stays well back of the fire._ _

__After the warriors' dance, there is more drinking, and feasting outside; it is lucky that this event is not formal, as eir proper place at the feast would be too close to the fire by far._ _

__Sif sits down beside Loki, her shoulders and belly wet with sweat. Soon enough the rest of Thor's companions join them._ _

__"Do the Jotun dance?" Fandral asks._ _

__Volstagg wipes at his mouth. "They must; remember that skald who came last winter and sang a Jotun air?"_ _

__"No." Fandral looks back at Loki. "So?"_ _

__"Yes. The meanings are different, of course. Midwinter, for the Jotun, is a prayer for the sun's resurrection, not a winter harvest festival."_ _

__Volstagg belches; Fandral pats his belly affectionately. "We will adopt it, then, when you are Consort. A taste of home!"_ _

__Hogun emerges from his mead-horn enough to mumble, "Not cold enough."_ _

__Loki says nothing._ _

__Thor joins them eventually, his mouth smeared with fat from visiting and eating with others. The light from the fire flickers over his skin, though this far from it, he is mostly in shadow. It suits him._ _

__"Well met, my friends," Thor says, heaving himself down to the grass. Loki has made emself a patch of frost to sit on; it is welcoming, but uncomfortably wet with ice-melt from the summer heat._ _

__"Hail, Thor," Volstagg says. "We were speaking of the training schedule for the week."_ _

__"That is a topic too staid for this night." Thor lies back on the grass, hands beneath his head. "The wind is cool, there is music and dance, and we are among friends."_ _

__Loki thinks of tying knots for cold into the rope at eir hip. To freeze the grass beneath them, to sheathe these Æsir in ice, to make the sky grey with snow-heavy clouds. It would last an hour or two at most, and drain em entirely, but for those two hours..._ _

__Sif swallows a piece of meat and tosses aside the bone. "It feels like rain."_ _

__"Then we shall dance beneath it, I think," Thor says, grinning widely at her._ _

__Loki is cold as the silence between stars._ _

__"You will stay with us even if it rains, will you not?" Fandral asks, from close to Loki's side. "The heat must be difficult for you."_ _

__"It would be…welcome, yes," Loki says. Jotun absorb water through the skin when necessary, and the Æsir fondness for alcohol is hard on em. Ey takes baths often, half-draining the tub of water on particularly hot days where spells against the heat wear out quickly. If rain does fall, ey will stand in it, and be glad of the moisture._ _

__"Then you will have to join in the dancing," Thor says, sitting up and smiling at em._ _

__"And perhaps take off some of my clothes, to better fit in with the tradition."_ _

__Thor's gaze slides down eir body, and then away._ _

__"That's the spirit!" Volstagg cries, holding up his horn in a toast._ _

__+++_ _

__Loki stays by Thor as he bids farewell to his companions for the night, and since both their chambers are within the palace, walks back with him._ _

__The night is well-dark, the stars and sliver-moon hidden by clouds. It is still hot, and Thor is still shirtless, though at least he is wearing more than just the loincloth used for the dancing earlier. His sword is at his hip._ _

__The grass of the fallow fields within the city walls tickles Loki's ankles._ _

__"I am glad that you joined us tonight," Thor says, eventually._ _

__"I was not sure I would enjoy it."_ _

__"But you did." Thor makes it almost a question._ _

__"Yes."_ _

__Out of the grass, onto a path between fields so as not to trample growing vegetables._ _

__"I have thought about what you said, of your jealousy," Thor says, pace slowing._ _

__"I am not jealous."_ _

__"You do not – I will not, when we are married. It would be unfair to you. But I know that you are...you are no virgin."_ _

__Of course it is that. Of course Loki is a woman to him, and bound by all the strictures that the Æsir place upon their women. Loki smiles, because violence would not change Thor's mind. Ey hates this place. "You would not say so if you knew anything of Jotun seiðr, or had paid attention when your tutor told you of Jotun culture. Leaving aside that I am clearly not with child, nor ever will be with any that you did not give, and that that is all that truly matters."_ _

Thor's breathing deepens. "You do not understand: I cannot be known to be cuckolded by my own w- _spouse_." Oh, and Loki hears the word he did not use.

"Then do not cuckold _me_."

__Thor nods, sharp with anger. "I accept."_ _

"Good," Loki says. It _is_ good. Loki only had to make emself seem like a jealous, whining cow to get the promise of Thor's fidelity. Thor understands nothing - of why his expectation of virginity is foolish, of why Loki is prepared to marry him when ey does not love Asgard or its people, of the potential costs of his infidelity, of why Loki will never be his wife. And yet Loki still desires him, his strength and his forthrightness, the unmaking heat of his body.

__Thor understands nothing, but Loki is a fool._ _

__+++_ _

__In late summer, as the air grows stifling and humid, the insects loud in the trees and breezes few and far between, Thor comes and sits beside Loki in the library, a book in his hands._ _

__The library is kept cooler than most of the rest of the palace, and stays that way due to having few windows and thick walls, and few lights, to keep from harming the paper. It is why Loki likes it there, besides the ready access to the books, and that those who do come there are mostly quiet and keep to themselves._ _

__Thor comes to the table bearing a monograph on, of all things, supply chain logistics: Loki takes in the title, then sees that Thor has opened it up to the middle, to a previously-marked page._ _

__Well. Perhaps he is growing into his responsibilities, after all._ _

__They read in silence for a time, until Loki finishes the section ey was reading, and says to Thor, "A warrior's choice of subject, that."_ _

__Thor looks up, back down at the book, and then grins over at Loki. "Indeed. I do not mind overmuch the need to sit, if it is worth the learning."_ _

__"Do your companions agree?"_ _

__Thor shrugs. "There are things asked of me which are asked of no one else, and I cannot depend on others to learn to rule in my stead."_ _

__Loki was taught to rule just as Býleistr and Helblindi were. Even the Consort of a ruler must know the workings of ruling. Býleistr's shieldmate, Aurnir, is heir to a fief in eir own right, but received some training in the difference between a single fiefdom and all of Jotunheim when ey decided to tie eir fortune to Býleistr's._ _

__Aurnir is held to be beautiful, among the Jotun: strong of arm, well-muscled, a face as sharp as a blade of ice, eyes a vivid sunset-red. Ey is also a seasoned warrior, and a subtle negotiator. That ey and Býleistr chose each other out of love is the stuff of legends, of tales that will endear Býleistr to the people. Aurnir has already had a child and heir, Býleistr's gift to Aurnir's fiefdom._ _

__Loki swallows, watching Thor shake golden-thin hair out of his eyes._ _

__+++_ _

__Thor comes to the library twice or thrice more through the remainder of the summer, but he and Loki do not talk. Nor is Thor over-friendly with any woman where Loki can see._ _

__Loki does trust Thor's promises, so ey does not worry. If the court begins to think Thor cold, or with a steady lover, so much the better._ _

__Loki counts down the heat of the days, waiting for the autumn and eir return home._ _

__+++_ _

__When it comes time for Loki to return to Jotunheim, Thor sees em off. He does not wear full armor, but enough of his formal wear to do honor to Loki as a throne-child._ _

__"It is my hope that you will pass the winter comfortably," Thor says, standing there in the arching doorway to Heimdall's post. Beneath their feet, the golden floor sparkles with a thousand suns' reflected light made solid for travelers' feet._ _

__"I know that you will," Loki says. "Until next summer, Prince Thor."_ _

__"Until next summer," Thor agrees. He bows to Loki, who returns the gesture, and then it is only stars and darkness and blessed, welcome cold._ _

__+++_ _

__The following summer begins much as all the hundreds before have: Thor and his companions awaiting em, and the stiffness of formal greetings. At least they were able to dispense with the diplomatic corps after Laufey stopped escorting em, at eir fourth century._ _

__This time, though, as they walk towards the center of the palace, Thor says, "I have heard of a Jotun tactician called Himinglaeva, who has written monographs on cold-weather warfare, but these works are not in Asgard. Are they at the court in Jotunheim?"_ _

__Loki curls eir tongue around a taunt, then dismisses it. "I have not read _every_ volume, despite what you may think. You may ask the librarian there yourself."_ _

__Thor nods, then turns his head to address his companions: only Sif and Volstagg, this time. Perhaps Fandral is out courting, or recovering from drink. "Care you for a journey to Jotunheim?"_ _

__"Now?" Volstagg is wearing summer garb._ _

__"Give us leave to fetch warmer clothing," Sif begins, but Loki touches her vambrace, briefly so as not to hurt her, and she falls into silence._ _

__"Perhaps in a few days," Loki suggests. "I'll write my parent to tell em of the visit, that none be surprised."_ _

__"That is wise," Thor agrees, and then they are at the door to the weaving chambers, which Thor and Volstagg cannot enter, and Sif would never choose to._ _

__Frigga is waiting for them, and in greeting her Loki does not see Thor and his friends go._ _

__+++_ _

_To my parent, Laufey of Jotunheim,_

_Prince Thor has taken it into his head to seek out works by the tactician Himinglaeva, and as there are no copies in all of Asgard, or so he says, he wishes to come seek them in Jotunheim. He begs your permission to come with his companions to Jotunheim in pursuit of knowledge, seven days hence._

_How fare Býleistr and eir child?_

_Loki_

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_It is well that your betrothed learn something of his spouse-home. Let him come._

_Býleistr is well, but Aurnir frets. How soon the parent forgets eir own bearing._

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____Before they pass from the Bifrost into Jotunheim, Loki takes from eir coat five pieces of string, spun by eir own hand, and ties one each around the neck of Thor and his companions for warmth. All five wear fur coats, but that would not be enough, and Loki wants them to remember the vast dangerous beauty of Jotunheim instead of the cold. It is more difficult to destroy a place that one remembers with pleasure, otherwise Loki would leave them to freeze, as ey has burned._ _ _ _ _

_____There are guards waiting for them, who escort them into the palace proper, to where Laufey and some guards are between meetings. Laufey is clad in lesser finery, familiar and a welcome sight even after only seven days in Asgard._ _ _ _ _

_____"Loki," says Laufey, and Loki kneels before em, kissing the back of eir hand before standing aside._ _ _ _ _

"Prince Thor of Asgard, and his companions," Loki says. "Fandral, the Dashing; Volstagg, the Valiant; Hogun, the Grim; and Sif, the Sword of the Young Æsir." It is not Sif's truest epithet; the unkind ken her as _Thor's Hand_ and _Thor's Lesser Sword_ , but those are insults, not honors, and it will harm none if the Jotun know her by a more accurate name.

_____They each bow in turn, though Thor's is shallower than the others, and is the only gesture of respect that Laufey answers._ _ _ _ _

_____"You are welcome in your search for knowledge," Laufey says, then, to Loki, "Show them the library. Eimgeitir will go with you."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Of course," Loki says, lowering eir chin as Laufey turns towards another room, some other task._ _ _ _ _

_____The library is kept with spells against water damage and heat, tapestries that cover what walls are not carved bookshelves. The floor is strewn with rugs, and the ice of the shelves themselves is carved with the images of knots, for strength and for preservation. It is no lesser a library than that of the palace in Asgard._ _ _ _ _

_____"Himinglaeva was a tactician, you said?"_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor nods. His cheeks are still pale – perhaps he is cold? Pale Æsir flush red when they are over-warm, similar to how the Jotun grow deeper indigo._ _ _ _ _

_____There are indeed monographs by Himinglaeva on the shelf, so Loki notes their positions and takes them down, spelling them against the warmth of Thor's hands. Writes down the titles in the great log-book, vouching for Thor emself, and then the six of them and the guard are once more outside._ _ _ _ _

_____The guard sees them to the Bifrost. On the other side, enveloped in the overpowering heat of Asgard in summer, Loki lets eir shoulders slump and unties the knots in the strings around Thor, the Warriors Three, and Sif's necks._ _ _ _ _

_____Thor takes the books and his companions elsewhere, presumably to read them and mock Jotun war-strategy, at least for Fandral's part. Thor, Loki no longer knows. Jotunheim is not far from Asgard, not using the Bifrost, but he has never before come to Jotunheim, not since he and Loki were betrothed, long ago._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki's hands feel empty without something to do, and so ey goes to the weaving chambers to spin thread._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____Some few days later Thor comes to em at the noon meal, sitting down beside em in an a chair long abandoned by its original occupant, and says, "I would have you show me what your skills may do in battle."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki sits back in eir chair, looking up from eir plate. "A new area of study indeed," ey murmurs, not without scorn._ _ _ _ _

_____Thor flushes slightly. "Himinglaeva thinks much of the skills of Jotun sorcerers. I would know what he expects -"_ _ _ _ _

_____"Ey," Loki says._ _ _ _ _

_____"What?"_ _ _ _ _

_____"Not 'he,' 'ey.'"_ _ _ _ _

Thor frowns. "I would know what _Himinglaeva_ expects of sorcerers in battle."

_____"It varies by the weaver, of course. I believe there is a monograph on the sociology of seiðr among Jotun warriors in the library here."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor's hand falls heavy on the back of Loki's chair. "It is not sociology I seek. It is tactics."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki wipes eir fingers off. "Surely it is common knowledge here what a Jotun sorcerer will do in war."_ _ _ _ _

_____The muscles in Thor's throat shift. "I would know for myself their scope, unaugmented by the Casket of Ancient Winters."_ _ _ _ _

_____The Casket, lost now to Jotunheim. Locked up in some treasure-trove in Asgard, most likely, and Loki would only be able to rescue it at the cost of war. Ey disentangles a line of unused rope from eir waist. "All seiðr is weaving," ey says, laying it on the table. The end is beginning to fray. "All seiðr, even that without cloth. It joins potential, will, energy, and reality. A small spell has few requirements, and so can be accomplished with simple knots: heating food would be one such. The more complex the knots, the more complicated the result. But a weaver is limited: a too-complex weaving, or one that requires more energy than ey can give, will not take effect, or worse, will twist in unexpected ways."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor looks up from where he is playing with the salt-dish. "This is nothing but theory."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Just as a warrior must wait for adult strength to wield weapons as an adult would, a seiðr-worker must wait for first maturity, then receptive sexual congress, then childbirth to achieve full power. Thus I cannot show you the strength and workings of Jotun sorcerers, as I have yet to come to the life stages that will allow me the strength my seniors bring to bear."_ _ _ _ _

_____The salt-dish appears to be very absorbing, given the way Thor is playing with it. "So you cannot show me?"_ _ _ _ _

_____"I could describe the spells, but not perform them. Which is just as well. I am sure Jotun war-sorcery would be received with joyous welcome in the court of Asgard."_ _ _ _ _

_____A flicker of a smile. "It would not, at that. I do still wish to hear your descriptions, though, at some point."_ _ _ _ _

_____"I await your desires," Loki says, and does not need to watch Thor's face to know him uncomfortable._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____Come late afternoon, ey decides to go watch training: ey does not wish to have Thor thinking of em as some wild beast, to be tracked and then taken as prize._ _ _ _ _

_____After the official rounds of training, Loki moves out onto the field. There is silence, this time, and none try to stop em. Thor is drinking from a dipper pulled from a trough of water, chin tilted up and the tendons of his throat exposed, when he sees Loki, but he swallows and sets the dipper back._ _ _ _ _

_____"You asked for my knowledge of war-weavings," Loki murmurs, keeping eir voice low. Thor leans in, turning his head to give Loki his ear. "After this, perhaps? In the forest clearing." Thor smells of dust and sweat, of himself. The raw Æsir animal stink._ _ _ _ _

_____Thor pulls back a bit, then nods. "In two hours."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Very well." Loki turns, paces back the palace. The Einherjar present are watching em, wondering what ey spoke to Thor about. They will assume a tryst: betrothed, ey and Thor are bound tightly enough that to lie together would not be unexpected. Loki does not mind their asumptions; if the match is thought to have grown into love, eir position will be the better assured._ _ _ _ _

_____The grass is frozen shining green by the time Thor arrives. He has bathed and dressed, in linen breeches and a light shirt instead of the training padding that he wore earlier, but his face is still flushed with the heat, and he is still armed. Loki does not stand to greet him, but Thor does not seem to notice, draping himself over the thin plane of ice on the ground and sighing with pleasure._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki is reminded, unhappily, that for Thor the ice is cold, rather than only a gasp in the direction of tolerable._ _ _ _ _

_____"So," Thor says. "War magic."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Yes." Loki sets eir distaff down on the ice in front of emself. "Temperature magic: ice, fire, calling items from one place to another. Projecting the voice. These are all simple. Greater magics would be illusions, defensive weavings, hearing the thoughts of others, speaking to animals. The very powerful will have knowledge of potential futures, bounded by cosmic limits on certitude, and the ability to bend others to their will. To make and unmake fertility. To walk between the realms without a road." Ey breathes. "The greatest seiðr-workers see truly the light of future possibilities, and can collapse them according to their own desires."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor breathes out. "Are there many? Sorcerers who can change the future."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Not among the Jotun. Among the Vanir, yes, there are four or five, perhaps, in a generation. Among the Æsir...your mother, though of the extent of her powers I am not certain." Loki refreshes the sheen of ice._ _ _ _ _

_____Thor is silent for a long time, sitting there, and then he stands, walks across the clearing, returns._ _ _ _ _

_____"What skill have you?"_ _ _ _ _

_____"Illusions, mostly, though I sometimes speak to beasts –"_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor lays a hand on Loki's chest, hot against Loki's skin through eir shirt. Loki, already spelled to near-Æsir temperature in order to keep from overheating, only sits there._ _ _ _ _

"I _thought_ you had warmed yourself," Thor says smugly.

_____Loki sits forward, settling a knee between Thor's legs, closing some of the distance._ _ _ _ _

_____"As I said. Temperature is one of the least difficult gifts." Thor's breath is sour with watered-down ale from the midday meal, and his palm is still pressed over Loki's heart. It is over-familiar, over-knowing, and Loki takes his hand if only to remove it. Presses it flat to the ice, leans forward, and kisses him._ _ _ _ _

_____They are neither of them without experience. It is well, the kiss. If a marriage were only kissing, rather than another three or four thousand years of living tied to each other, then Loki might not resent every string of circumstance that has led them here._ _ _ _ _

_____Eir heart beats faster anyway, and Thor – Thor rests his free hand on the back of Loki's neck, too familiar by half again than the palm over eir heart, and ends the kiss, and says, smile too-intimate, "I had hoped this was why you summoned me here."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki pulls away, and Thor's hand leaves eir neck, sliding to the small of eir back. Pressure against eir skin, a reminder. Closed in._ _ _ _ _

_____"Desire," Loki says, "is also a weapon." At Thor's fist clenching in eir clothes, the anger rising in his face, Loki amends, "And not one that requires weaving."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor pushes em away, stands up, face cold. "Your point is well taken."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki, rumpled and sprawled on the ice of eir own making, waves a hand. "It was no slight upon your skill, nor any denial of feeling. I meant only that it was your desire that drew you here, rather than the promise of a demonstration of seiðr."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor looks away, face clearing, and he sits once more. "This is not a match either of us would have chosen, but I think it will be good, between us. If we are willing to let it be so."_ _ _ _ _

"Yes," Loki says. Ey does not say: _You see me as woman, and lesser; you see me as weak, though I hope that will change now that you have an interest in what my so-called cowardice may do for you; you think my people less; you think yourself a sacrifice for a peace that will end in betrayal anyway. You do not understand what your children will be in the eyes of your court._ Ey kisses Thor again, and allows emself to be pressed to the barely-tolerable ground, then undressed. Thor is hotly aroused against eir leg, and expresses no surprise at the feel of Loki's own arousal hard beneath his palm.

_____"This much we may do safely, I think," Loki says, and Thor, wide-eyed, mouth red with cold and pressure from kissing, touches em in turn._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor will not stop looking at em. If this is the consequence of mere sexual experimentation, Loki dreads what will happen once they have consummated the marriage. Something vile. Thor insisting on feeding Loki from his own hand, perhaps. Loki intends to cut it off should he try._ _ _ _ _

_____Though Loki will freely grant that ey half-expected Thor to boast to all of Asgard how he conquered the second-born of the throne of Jotunheim, brought the monster to not even his bed but rather had it on the grass, like beasts, or like those taken by Midsummer revels._ _ _ _ _

_____It is not true, not in the details, but ey prepared a retort anyway. Of how Loki is too cold to touch, and is not Thor's member still present, giving his lie? And Loki let emself be burning-cold to match, just in case. But Thor does not boast, and instead upon catching sight of Loki he falls silent between sentences, and is quiet with thought, or perhaps with longing._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki will let him lust, for a few days._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____By summer's end Loki wears plum-dark bruises on eir upper arms, while Thor's thighs are mottled with yellow-green-blue from Loki's fingers. Every other day, at least, they tumble together in the grass of the clearing, or in bed, or, once, memorably, in the library, Loki keeping them both hidden as ey held Thor's prick._ _ _ _ _

_____They have found each other pleasure with hands and hips, but not yet full joining: that shall be for after the wedding. Loki would have taken the greater seiðr that came with opening emself, and been pleased; but Thor insisted._ _ _ _ _

_Not because I think you weak, or womanish,_ he said, _but that I would not risk a child, not yet._

_____Loki did not fight him: eir power is not yet great enough to make emself temporarily barren, and a too-early child would mean a too-early wedding, and being torn sooner from Jotunheim._ _ _ _ _

In the hours not spent embracing Thor, Loki weaves. It is the same spell as before, but the women of the weaving chambers all agree. _A lovely shade of red,_ they say. _Madder-bright! How becoming it will be – who is it for?_

_____Loki's colors of choice are grey, black, dark green. Hidden and unremarkable. Eir skin is noticeable enough on Asgard to require little else._ _ _ _ _

Come halfway through the weaving, Loki begins to look up through eir lashes, to smile secretively, as though lovestruck. _For – someone special,_ ey says, and watches the eyebrows rise, the fond smiles. It is well-known how Thor favors red, and Loki _has_ been seen in Thor's company, of late.

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____The last day of summer, Loki is prepared to say eir farewells to Thor at breakfast, but Thor insists on walking with em to the door of the Bifrost chamber._ _ _ _ _

_____"I am glad that we have become close," Thor says, too-earnest, and Loki laughs._ _ _ _ _

_____"You are glad of the bed-sport, you mean."_ _ _ _ _

_____"That as well." Thor touches the jut of eir collarbone, close to eir neck. There is a fading bruise there which twinges at his touch. "I have always thought you clever, and am glad that it is to my benefit now, rather than arrayed against me."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Rather than war-weavings used on the other side of a battlefield from you," Loki murmurs._ _ _ _ _

_____Thor swallows, his gaze flickering to Loki's mouth. "You know my feelings on that."_ _ _ _ _

_____"I do." Loki reaches into a bag, pulls out the cloth ey wove. To Loki's eyes it it white, sheened with light-diffraction rainbows from the power within, but ey knows that to all others it seems red. "A cloak, for you. It is not without its own power: for stealth, among other abilities, but as I doubt you will use them I shall not tell you how they are activated until I return."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor takes it, shocked, his fingers digging into the cloth and then loosening, feeling the texture. "I thank you."_ _ _ _ _

_____"I think –" Loki begins, but Thor's mouth is upon eirs, sour-hot and passionate. Loki does not push him away._ _ _ _ _

_____After a time, Thor pulls away, breathing hard. "Until next summer," he says._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki nods, and steps into the room, looking forward to the relief of Jotunheim's chill._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____"A personal message from the Heir in Asgard," Býleistr says, entering the study._ _ _ _ _

_____"What?" Loki looks up from eir book._ _ _ _ _

_____"A message. For you. From Asgard." Býleistr repeats, tapping a roll of paper against eir palm. "Tell me: should I expect a declaration of war within the day, or is it love poetry? Have you caught the attention of your own betrothed, at last?"_ _ _ _ _

"I cannot know if I have not _read_ it," Loki says, reaching for it – and oh, that was foolish. Býleistr pulls it away.

_____"You have not received anything from Asgard since they sent the betrothal-gifts at your second century. What new mischief have you wrought?"_ _ _ _ _

_____"Shouldn't you be with Sivor?"_ _ _ _ _

_____Býleistr's face softens at eir child's name, but ey does not give Loki the letter. "I care deeply for my little sibling's well-being also."_ _ _ _ _

Loki stands. "I won him by trickery, magic, and my own beauty. Give _over_ , Býleistr!"

_____"Ah." Býleistr eyes em. "You did not return with new weaving-strength."_ _ _ _ _

_____"That is no business of yours," Loki spits, making another grab at the letter._ _ _ _ _

_____Býleistr laughs. "You were refused! How precious, and how Æsir." Ey finally, finally, sets the letter in Loki's hands, but instead of leaving leans over, as though to read it as well._ _ _ _ _

_____"Go away."_ _ _ _ _

_____"It cannot be so risqué as all that, if he will not accept your opening."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Says ey who bragged to me of eir beloved's prowess for a month."_ _ _ _ _

"You _had_ just given children to a seiðr-worker, and were smug with it."

_____"I will kill you in your _sleep_ ," Loki says, an old, old curse, from before even Loki's betrothal, when the throne was abruptly taken from eir reach forever. Ey has never meant it._ _ _ _ _

_____"Very well." Býleistr grins, takes a step back. "I will not try to read it."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki breaks the seal – the sign of the royal house of Asgard, a stylized World-Tree with a crowned mountain in its highest branches, and a bird upon another branch – and then the one below it, Thor's personal seal, his name in runes below a crown. Unrolls it._ _ _ _ _

_To Throne-Child Loki of Jotunheim, from Prince Thor of Asgard,_

_Thank you for the cloak. I have used it often since you gave it to me, and I am grateful for the warmth this winter, which passes colder than usual. You might almost be comfortable._

_I forgot to return the volumes which I borrowed this summer from your House's library. If it meets with your King's approval, I wish to visit and return them myself. If you have not read them, I recommend it. Himinglaeva's ideas about logistics are interesting, and serve well those who intend to spend seasons away from their own lands on campaign._

_____So Thor wishes to see em again. How utterly, disgustingly flattering._ _ _ _ _

_____"What says the love poem?" Býleistr drawls._ _ _ _ _

_____"It is neither. He wishes to return some books of war strategy which he borrowed from the library here."_ _ _ _ _

_____Býleistr's eyebrows rise. "He could have just sent them."_ _ _ _ _

_____"He is known for his courage, not his sense."_ _ _ _ _

_____"And walking into Jotunheim to return books is courageous. Yes, I can see that." Býleistr hums, pressing a hand to eir belly, and seems surprised anew that it is flat once more._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki smirks._ _ _ _ _

_____Býleistr leans forward, one hand on the table. "Just you wait, little sibling, until you are with child."_ _ _ _ _

_" _I_ shall spend every moment of it in my weaving chambers," Loki says piously._

_____"If you were not poised to become a great seiðr-worker, that would not represent a threat to all Nine Realms and perhaps the Tree itself," Býleistr says fondly. "It will be well, your betrothed coming here. I shall tell our parent."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Thank you," Loki says, and watches em leave._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____After ten minutes in Jotunheim's deep winter, even bundled up in furs, Thor is already shivering. As soon as the semi-official greetings are dispensed with, Loki takes him aside and settles the cloak more firmly about his shoulders, then ties a knot in the string that tightens the hood._ _ _ _ _

_____Thor's eyes go wide. "I did not -" he begins, but Loki interrupts him._ _ _ _ _

_____"You are no seiðr-worker, to sense the knots of spells woven in."_ _ _ _ _

_____"No," Thor says, slowly. His hands are full of the books, and he follows Loki to the library._ _ _ _ _

_____"You can put them on the shelf over there," Loki murmurs, pointing to where Bryja, the librarian, is writing out copies of which books have been retrieved from the shelf that day. Thor gives the books to em, then on the way out, lingers at the shelves of war-histories._ _ _ _ _

_____"May I?" he asks, after he has spent near thirty seconds reading the spines._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki ties another knot in the cloak-hood. "Yes."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor pulls one book, then another, off the shelf, beginning to read them. He is no scholar, Loki knows, but his youthful disdain of anything written has faded into an acknowledgement that war is not only weapons and flesh, that it is fought also with food for both warrior and beast, vantage points, and defensive positions. That these things are best learned from books has not escaped him, and so he is more moderate than he once was._ _ _ _ _

_____Watching him read, Loki is struck by how quiet he seems, turned inward into himself. His hair is unbound, strands falling into his face, and Loki – Loki tucks the strands back, curling eir fingers around the back of Thor's head, and draws him forward for a kiss._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor in eir bed is a strange sight. Not unwanted, but unfamiliar. Thor in Jotunheim at all is strange, let alone spread warm and naked over the gift cloak to keep him from freezing utterly._ _ _ _ _

_____"I thought of this," Thor says into Loki's shoulder, lying quiescent beside em once the first urgency is spent. "Of lying with you on this cloak."_ _ _ _ _

_____"And now you have." Loki strokes eir fingers along Thor's spine, feeling the strength of the muscles in his back._ _ _ _ _

_____There is a long silence, and then, "Yes. Now I have."_ _ _ _ _

_____Not the act he imagined, then. Loki shifts eir knees, wrapping the higher one around Thor's waist, feeling eir own near-openness. "What did you imagine?"_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor makes a strangled noise and lays a hand over Loki's hip. "'Twas not that; I have no intent of taking that virtue early."_ _ _ _ _

"A shame." Loki sighs and rolls onto eir back. What _did_ he imagine, then?

_____Surely not –_ _ _ _ _

_____"If you would have my mouth, I have no objections as long as you use yours," Loki suggests, to the ceiling._ _ _ _ _

_____"I – that – you –" Thor sputters._ _ _ _ _

_____"I suppose not, then." Not that either, then. A shame. A Vanir custom, that, and not done lightly. To put one's mouth to another's sex for pleasure only seems a deep intimacy. Loki has never tried it, though not for lack of interest._ _ _ _ _

_____"If you wish it…" Thor begins, hesitantly._ _ _ _ _

_____"Oh, I think I do."_ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____The spring passes warm, welcome. Thor writes a letter requesting permission to return what he borrowed in winter, but Loki is with Býleistr and Helblindi on tour of the fiefdoms, and so they do not see each other, if Thor comes at all._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki dreads summer. Not Thor, of course, though his unthinking insults, his carelessness, his easy acceptance of his right to anything that pleases him, are difficult to countenance in large doses. They loom larger and smaller in Loki's memory by turns, depending on eir mood. On hot nights when eir bed is uncomfortable, ey thinks of Asgardian summer days spent lying together, Thor's skin sticky and near-burning against eirs. It is easy enough to forgive Thor his faults long enough to find pleasure in the memories of him._ _ _ _ _

_____The first day of summer, Loki goes to the bridge, watching it swirl into form, energy coalescing, and walks across._ _ _ _ _

_____Inside the golden room, its walls alight from the energy bleed-off – inefficient, that; they should keep it cold to lower the resistance, and Loki has thought for years that the profligate waste is overbearing – Thor stands, waiting. When the bridge is closed, he offers his hand to Loki, smiling but saying nothing._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki ties a knot in the cord at eir hip, to keep them from harming each other, and lays eir hand on his outstretched palm. Thor's hands are rough from weapons-work, just as Loki's fingertips and the ridge of eir hands are thick-skinned from knotwork and scarred from ice-blades._ _ _ _ _

_____"Welcome back," Thor says, his hand closing around Loki's. Ey can feel how he burns, the tension of holding back from whatever gesture of fondness he wishes to act out. Heimdall is watching them._ _ _ _ _

_____"Thank you," Loki says. Ey lets go of Thor's hand before he can try to kiss it, and Thor's expression shifts to something like sadness, before he turns to go to the door._ _ _ _ _

_____"Thank you, Heimdall," he says._ _ _ _ _

_____"It is only my duty, sir." Heimdall's eyes are golden-bright, blind and yet all-seeing. Loki has long wondered whence Heimdall's powers come, and if he sleeps._ _ _ _ _

_____At the weaving halls, the door opens at Thor's knock to show a young woman, dark-haired and with smooth, dark skin. Her hair is woven in the style of an unmarried noblewoman, the daughter of a warrior house perhaps._ _ _ _ _

_____"Your Royal Highness; Throne-Child," she says, curtseying._ _ _ _ _

_____"Is my mother the Queen within?"_ _ _ _ _

_____"I will ask." She turns to say something to those behind her._ _ _ _ _

_____"Oh, she's not here, love," Loki hears from within. An older voice, from an experienced weaver. "Tell them to come again later, or to look to the storehouses if it's urgent."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki catches Thor's eye. There are storehouses on the palace grounds, of course, but it is also the Queen's duty to see to the supply of all the city, so the great storehoues are near the city walls, closer to the fields that supply them and the people who need them most. It is far – too far to go just to see the queen for a few moments._ _ _ _ _

_____"We could go elsewhere until she returns," Loki suggests._ _ _ _ _

_____Thor shifts his weight. "Aye," he says, then, to the girl, "Thank you."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Sir," she says, and does not close the door until Thor turns away, beginning to walk with Loki towards his chambers._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki attends sparring practice the following week. There is water for the warriors in a trough by the side of the field, so in order to keep from dehydrating Loki uses it to make blades, instead of using eir own body's water. On Jotunheim, with so much ice around, water is easy enough to absorb and reform; on Asgard, it is only easy when the weather is close to storming, the air thick with moisture._ _ _ _ _

_____But none will allow em to enter the practice rings: ey stands outside the ring where Fandral, sweating, comely, smiling, stands, but there is always another warrior quicker to enter that ring than Loki, even after Fandral has left it._ _ _ _ _

_____The same is true of Hogun's matches, so rather than wait to be turned aside from Volstagg and Sif as well, ey goes to the side and practices not war-seiðr but bladework, for a time. Stabbing and slicing strange enemies, and throwing the ice-knives into the wooden walls. Watching the grain split farther with each strike._ _ _ _ _

_____When ey tires of that, ey goes back to the trough, eir hands wet with melting ice, and submerges eir distaff into it._ _ _ _ _

_____"That's meant to be drunk from –" one of the Einherjar says, as ice forms around the weapon, growing from the top and bottom to make a long staff that will reach to Loki's chest when set on the ground._ _ _ _ _

_____"If I were poisoning it," Loki says mildly, "would I make it so obvious?" Ey pulls the weapon, a core of ash-wood beneath ice with a trident blade at one end, out of the water. This is eir usual choice of weapon in direct combat - an ice-staff made more potent through seiðr - but it is disconcerting even to the Jotun to see a weaver's weapon used for violence directly. Eir parent's court is used to it now, of course, but once..._ _ _ _ _

_____Well. In time, the Æsir will also become used to Loki's choice of weapons._ _ _ _ _

_____From a far circle, Hogun meets eir gaze, so ey goes to him, stopping just outside the ring._ _ _ _ _

_____"I would spar with you," ey says._ _ _ _ _

_____"A mutual feeling." Hogun's eyes are dark, his hair pulled severely back. "It is rare to see a warrior fight with a distaff."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki hefts its weight. "I find it comfortable." Ey steps over the line, into the circle._ _ _ _ _

_____Hogun's preferred weapon is a flanged mace, one that will do damage through armor and helm; Loki is wary of it, for all that this one is duller than one chosen for the battlefield would be. The weight of it, its points, will do more than merely crack ice._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki holds eir staff in a guard position, taking two steps widdershins, then pausing – Hogun waits, waits._ _ _ _ _

_____A quick jab with the blade-end of the staff, and Hogun dodges, to the side and then into Loki's space, mace rising towards eir head, and Loki steps aside, bringing the back end of the staff up, around towards Hogun's head. It meets the mace, not blocking – Loki could not, could never hope of that – but redirecting, as Loki spins –_ _ _ _ _

_____It is a good match, and ends with Hogun's mace a finger's width from Loki's temple, both of them out of breath, Loki's skin raw and dry from strengthening eir staff._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki tilts eir chin town, lowers eir gaze. "I yield," ey says._ _ _ _ _

_____"It was well-fought." Hogun lets his mace fall to his side. "You learned your fighting from elsewhere; it is not like the staff-work done here. Alfheim, was it?"_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki smiles. "It was from a scroll, I fear," ey murmurs. "Not from my world, nor any close to it." There are a thousand thousand worlds; only some of them are connected by the branches of the Tree._ _ _ _ _

_____"No," Hogun says, thoughtfully. "I thought I had seen its like before, but I see now I was mistaken."_ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____"It is passing strange," Loki says to the ceiling of Thor's bedchamber, uncurling eir fingers from gripping the sheets, "that you have no natural skill with seiðr, given your blood." Ey glances down to where Thor kneels on the floor between eir legs._ _ _ _ _

_____"It is not a man's skill." He laps once, absently, at Loki's sex, though neither of them is ready for a second round as yet._ _ _ _ _

_____"And yet your father."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor bites at the inside of eir thigh. "That was in exchange for the sacrifice of his eye, as you well know."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Do I know?" Loki pets at Thor's hair. Eir mouth tastes still of salt and flesh, animal-hot. "Would Odin All-Father admit to choosing to be buggered, for the knowledge of –"_ _ _ _ _

_____"Mind your tongue." Thor puts his to good use for some time, an effective enough incentive._ _ _ _ _

_____"Is it not the act of a true scholar to raise doubts, and seek the knowledge that will put them to rest?"_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor unfolds from kneeling, coming to lie down on the bed beside Loki. "You ask questions to cause strife, not bring knowledge." He wipes his mouth._ _ _ _ _

_____"It's not my fault if the answers aren't welcome," Loki says, and feels emself smile too fondly by half. To cover up eir lapse of judgement ey curls a hand against the back of Thor's head and draws him forward, setting eir teeth to his neck._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____Frigga watches em weave._ _ _ _ _

_____"You weave too tightly for your warp-threads," she says finally._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki frowns down at the fabric. The threads were dyed in blue, but did not come out evenly, and were to be cast aside for bleaching and redyeing until ey took them up. The color reminded em of skin and land, indivisible. "I have always woven so."_ _ _ _ _

_____"The warp cannot hold when you put so much strain upon it." Frigga gestures to the fabric without touching. "Do you find that your weavings fray too soon, that they come apart when stretched?"_ _ _ _ _

_____"I've never been accused of lack of skill before."_ _ _ _ _

_____Frigga sighs. "I do not refer to your magic, merely to the cloth."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki sets eir hands upon the roll of fabric near eir belly. "I don't see a difference."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Oh, child." Frigga lays a hand upon eir shoulder, briefly. "Perhaps that's why. Not all weaving must be magic. Some need be only for the wearing. For the warmth and beauty."_ _ _ _ _

_____Ey cracks eir knuckles. "I don't know how you can say that. Even as a child when I tied knots unknowing they turned to seiðr, and you're more powerful than I."_ _ _ _ _

_____"I have taught myself to weave without magic." She rests a hand on the frame of the loom, without touching the cloth. "The key to magic is that it is by nature hidden. When it spills from your hands so everything you make is enchanted, you lose the greater part of your power."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki glances up at her, then away. "It doesn't drain me to leave a spell woven."_ _ _ _ _

_____She smiles. "I did not mean the strength within you."_ _ _ _ _

_____"I don't take your meaning."_ _ _ _ _

_____"I know," she says, touching eir arm in fondness. "And your place in Asgard is and will always be different from my own, at least, so perhaps all will be well regardless."_ _ _ _ _

Frigga is Queen where Loki will be Consort. _We are both underestimated_ , Loki thinks, and then amends, _She is underestimated; I am reviled._ Ey shivers with bitterness.

"I pray so," ey says, meeting her gaze. Ey does not smile. Frigga is too clever not to see its falseness.

+++ 

It is not infrequent on Jotunheim that some outlying fiefdom's leader decides that ey would rule better than eir neighbor, or that eir liege is unjust. Loki is well-acquainted with such squabbles, has sat at Býleistr's right hand, and later eir left, in judgement. Once the liege of the province of Klifdal took insult at eir treatment during a visit to eir neighbor's lands, and sought to oust em; Býleistr took em from eir seat, and replaced em with eir heir.

(Loki suggested to Býleistr later, in private, that the heir of the offending house should have been married to a second child of the offended.

"That is your own hurt seeking to hurt others," Býleistr said, "and anyway Herkja has no children; I cannot plight the troth of the unborn."

"Would I were unborn that you might be the one sweltering among the Æsir ," Loki cursed, in what ey now realizes to be childish stung pride at having been seen truly.)

Eir duties, when ey is married, will include assisting Frigga with the stewardship of the household. It will mean care of the palace's locks and doors, oversight of the palace servants, and management of the realm's harvest and storehouses. Thus ey has long studied logistics and has read what books are in Asgard and in Jotunheim of people's tastes and needs and how to provide for them, to prepare in times of good harvest against seasons of poor. It is not a field that is studied overmuch, not like the feeding and supply of armies. Loki's own parent was once ruler of only the fief of Afltjörn. Ey led with eir shieldmate Fárbauti a rebellion against Thrym, who held the throne and had spent eir power unwisely, favoring the fiefs of eir lovers in a time of short summers and poor harvests. 

Loki owes eir title to the power of hunger. Perhaps in that ey is a good choice for Asgard's future Consort: Thor does not think of the peasants in their fields, the lesser Æsir who will never dine at the King's table. He will not think of how they fare - oh, he will care, should it be brought to his attention. But he will not see the food on his plate and think of the hands that grew the wheat for his bread, and the royal table never goes wanting, no matter the state of the harvest.

+++

There are the wild dance-revels of Midsummer, and also the formal dances of the court. They are structured and often partnered, set to finer music than only drums. Loki learned them while in Asgard, and while ey at first rebelled, running away from lessons and deliberately stepping on feet, ey has come to tolerate it, and come to dance all parts, regardless of gender.

The formal celebration of Midsummer comes a few days before the wild night, and Loki dresses emself in black and silver, knowing the shade of eir skin to be striking enough in the Æsir court. Dinner is a fine meal, well-seasoned meats, vegetables fresh from the fields, hot bread from new-harvested rye. Loki eats little, tense at Frigga's left hand, but ey enjoys the ripe berries served both raw and baked into tarts. Loki slips them into eir mouth one at a time, biting down and savoring the flavor. Eir mouth grows sticky-sweet with juice, eir fingers stained dark purple.

After the feast, there is dancing; Loki joins in on one that requires partners, taking the male place next to Thor's cousin Sjöfn, whose hands shake as she smooths her skirt beside em, and who looks at Loki only sidelong.

Ey allows eir skin to grow ice-cold before ey joins eir palm to Sjöfn's for the dance. After the music changes, Sjöfn flees from em, balling her hands into fists and trapping them in her skirt for warmth, and Loki smiles.

Ey sidles into place beside Fandral next, and flirts with and insults him by turns throughout the whole figure, paying no heed to his stony silence and the tension in his shoulders. Ey cannot repress eir good spirits.

The following piece ey stays out of, watching the women flow in patterns around each other, weaving shapes on the floor with all their bodies. There are no men. Loki wonders what could be woven in dance, and marvels that none have thought of it before.

The third dance ey takes is a slow one, beside a young woman new to court from an inner fief; she is no warrior, nor any sort of seiðr-worker, but her hands are rough, and her skin smells of herbs. A healer, perhaps, or a gardener. Loki takes her silently through the motions. She is not a very good dancer, but she will improve, and she does not seem afraid of em, only unused to seeing Jotun at all.

At the end, she cursies in answer to eir bow, and Loki thinks wistfully that it is a shame ey is bound to sexual fidelity here; her neck is lovely and her breasts lovelier yet. Better not to know her name, then.

Just before ey can begin a dance with Hogun - the man is nearly as stiff as a corpse, for all his fluidity in combat - Thor taps on eir shoulder, offers his hand. Loki glances over at Hogun, but that valiant is already backing away, making eyes at Sif to rescue him. They can be poor dancers together, then, Loki decides, and sets eir palm in Thor's.

Halfway through the dance, Loki turns them both, pushes back, and then - and then Thor is in the woman's part, clumsy and unused to it, at Loki's mercy. His face flushes, and he glances over Loki's shoulder often, scanning for onlookers as he would scan for attackers.

"Worry not," Loki says, cradling eir hand at Thor's waist, black leather accented in bright red against eir palm. "That cape you wear as vanity has its uses."

"Invisibility?" Thor says, shoulders easing.

"Unremarkability." Ey pushes Thor close, to another couple, then turns them both out of the way in time. "If it pleases you."

"I do not mind playing a woman's part, not truly," Thor says, slowly, his voice low. "It is what might be said afterwards, in the ears of my - warriors. That makes me guard myself."

Oh, and to hear him choose to acknowledge that there are not only men in Thor's battles, that is sweet to hear, even though it trips off his tongue unsteady. Loki pauses in the dancing to kiss him, as the crowd swirls around them unwatching.

Thor's hands come to knot in Loki's hair, their bodies close, Loki's teeth only half-gentle against Thor's lips. 

"Let us go to bed," Loki murmurs, sliding eir hands down Thor's still-clothed back, beneath his cape, to pull Thor tight to eir body.

Thor heaves a breath against eir temple, does not pull away. "Loki." An attempt at a definite refusal.

"Or would you rather stay standing here, seeking pleasure where others might see -"

Thor's hands flex in eir hair, pulling em in for another kiss.

"Though I do suppose that you might be missed, after a time, and there is no guarantee that your father cannot see through it," Loki states, Thor pushing em backwards even before ey has finished talking. 

"Why did you not _say_ so?" 

_____Loki shrugs. "The moment didn't seem opportune."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor stares at em, chest heaving, mouth red-wet, and then storms to the side of the room._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki makes eir way to the edge of the floor, finds again the lovely Æsir of the green-smelling hands and the excellent bosom, and dances with her thrice more throughout the night. Her name is Sigyn, she tells em. New to court, her father's firstborn (but, Loki thinks, never heir). She works in the healing halls, creating the more exacting and specific herb-derived concoctions that are graceful where healing stones are blunt._ _ _ _ _

_____Sigyn smells of cardamom and nutmeg, and Loki resolves that after eir first child, ey will make eir way into Sigyn's bed. It will not be difficult. Already even she warms to em. And Loki is hardly likely to bear a child by Sigyn._ _ _ _ _

_____+++_ _ _ _ _

_____Near midnight Loki tires of dancing, trapped with so many Æsir in one place. Ey drifts into eir own rooms, where this summer ey has had a small hand loom set up. It is only big enough to weave single-use workings, which are far more useful for Loki's purposes than the great swaths of fabric that ey would have to make in the weaving chambers._ _ _ _ _

_____Partially it is for subterfuge - carrying a distaff is an obvious sign of eir ability with seiðr, which in Jotunheim is to eir credit; in Asgard, combined with eir race, it will act against em. But Loki refuses to be entirely defenseless, and a brace of rope at eir waist is hardly more subtle than the staff. So ey intends to carry weavings, hidden as near-innocuous cloths._ _ _ _ _

_____Besides, ey is Jotun; it is well known that a Jotun near water is never truly unarmed._ _ _ _ _

_____Ey weaves a half a square, in white yet again, before a furtive knock comes on the door._ _ _ _ _

_____"Enter," ey calls, and is not surprised to see Thor._ _ _ _ _

_____He is dressed in the remains of his feast finery, cape left elsewhere, tunic shifted open from the dancing. The lines of his formal clothing accent the breadth of his shoulders, the easy cant of his hips above well-muscled thighs._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki sits back in the seat of eir loom, kicking eir feet away from the pedals. "You overcame your horror of the King watching us, then."_ _ _ _ _

_____"I should have known you well enough to know that you spoke in mischief, not in warning," Thor says easily. "You are too proud to allow others to evade your sorcery."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki tucks one foot under the other thigh on the loom's bench. It is true, but Loki has no idea of the Allfather's powers. Ey has misjudged other seiðr-workers before, to eir disadvantage._ _ _ _ _

_____"I am flattered by your trust," ey says, unfolding and stepping out from behind the loom._ _ _ _ _

_____The slash of bare chest at the opening of Thor's tunic is warm against Loki's lips. He smells of sweat and, faintly, the cooking spices from the feast._ _ _ _ _

_____Thor catches eir hand, holds Loki's palm against his own. "I wish you would not be always guarded against me."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki snorts, standing to eir full height again. "You are not content with my bed and my future children?" Thor's fingers fall warm at the back of Loki's neck. It feels too close to a threat, but Loki does not pull away._ _ _ _ _

_____"I," Thor begins, and does not continue, leaning his head down. Breathing into the silence, the hot humidity of the summer night. His touch is like a brand over Loki's spine._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki shifts eir weight. "You?"_ _ _ _ _

_____"I know that this match was not our choice," Thor says, "but I am fond of you. I would not knowingly hurt you. And it pains me that you seem always to expect hurt from me."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki shakes Thor's hand off eir neck, but does not move away. "I am in a mood for fucking, not fighting. Put your mouth to a better use than insulting me." Ey pulls Thor's mouth down to eirs, kisses him to gasping, drags him towards the bed._ _ _ _ _

_____They undress separately, casting clothes to the floor where they each stand, until Loki, the slower, makes it to the bed. Lies down above Thor, who sets his hands over Loki's shoulder blades, as though to pull em down, but only rests there, stroking at the jut of bone beneath eir skin._ _ _ _ _

Loki kisses him before he can say something foolish and sentimental. _I would not knowingly hurt you._ What maudlin ignorance. What self-delusion. Loki could eat him for hatred, for five hundred years of prejudice and taunts, for summer-loneliness and disrespect, for _She_ and _He_ and _Monster_ and _Weakling_. That Loki came to this place already knowing eir parent had given away eir future does not make it better.

_____Ey bites marks into Thor's skin until he asks for em to stop, and takes eir pleasure halfway to pain, spilling finally across Thor's hip, Thor still heavy and too-hot below em. As ey moves to take hold of him, Thor catches eir hand, holds it._ _ _ _ _

_____"That is - part of why I came here this night," he says, meeting Loki's eyes once briefly before looking down at eir mouth, eir chest. "I did not mean only to bring you to bed."_ _ _ _ _

_____"Did you not," Loki says flatly. Ey rises up, sits back. "Tell me, then."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor struggles to sitting, pushing himself up to lean against the headboard, legs extended. Loki sits cross-legged on the bed, and is bitterly amused to see Thor glance down between eir legs and lick his lips before returning his gaze to eir face. And without an ounce of self-awareness._ _ _ _ _

_____"When we speak of bed-sport you offer yourself to me, to - in the way of child-making," Thor begins._ _ _ _ _

_____"I won't apologize for my desires."_ _ _ _ _

Thor blinks, gaze darting to Loki's sex and then away once more. He is aroused still, and Loki imagines that the next words from his mouth will be _I would accept that offer now._ Loki will push him down to the bed and sit upon him, the blaze of power rising in eir skin more pleasurable even than the act itself.

_____"No," Thor says, "Nor should you. And it is cowardly of me to hide my own."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki blinks. "You would open to me."_ _ _ _ _

_____"I would." Thor inhales, chest rising. His muscles stretch with it, golden, sweat-sticky. Ey desires him. To push him to the bed, to control that strength through a working more subtle yet than seiðr, or perhaps through seiðr, come to it._ _ _ _ _

_____"You don't think it will unman you?"_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor's jaw tightens, then eases. "I am always what I am," he says._ _ _ _ _

_____Loki watches him in silence until he shifts, uncomfortable._ _ _ _ _

_____"If you do not wish to -"_ _ _ _ _

_____"And what of my desires?"_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor glances down again. Annoyed, Loki takes eir hand from eir knee and slides a finger into emself. It does not give em pleasure, particularly, but it makes the point well enough._ _ _ _ _

_____"I think little of you asking for what you won't give me," ey says flatly, pulling the finger out. Thor's eyes follow it, his lips parting for a too-deep breath. Loki lets eir hand drop to the sheets. "It's inevitable that I will lie with you for children. It's not inevitable that I will share your bed."_ _ _ _ _

_____Thor leans forward. "It is merely that I would not risk a child too early."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki waves it away. "It's that you don't want it known that you chose the monster of your own will."_ _ _ _ _

_____"And I am glad of it!"_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki's whole body flares hot with shame and rage. Ey unfolds, getting off the bed. "Then I will not expose you to the risk of it being known." Ey begins to dress._ _ _ _ _

_____"What?" Thor says, and then, "No, stop, I did not mean that -" The bed creaks, and Thor's hand settles heavily at the join of Loki's neck and shoulder._ _ _ _ _

_____"What did you mean, then?"_ _ _ _ _

_____"I meant that I did choose you, and am glad that I did."_ _ _ _ _

_____Loki's breath heaves in eir chest. Ey did not choose, or rather, ey chose Thor because there was no other legitimate choice left to em. Is that a choice? Perhaps not._ _ _ _ _

_____Ey closes eir eyes and thinks of Sigyn._ _ _ _ _

_____"Yes," ey says. "I accept your opening."_ _ _ _ _

_____The night air is thick with heavy clouds as Thor spreads beneath em. They do no more than explore, yet he lies utterly unmade. Loki is at once jealous of his pleasure and flush with satisfaction as Thor whimpers at the stroking of eir fingers within him._ _ _ _ _


	2. Chapter 2

The day following, Loki is absorbed in weaving, and does not see Thor at all, except at meals, where ey carefully avoids Thor's gaze. Ey does not know what ey wants to see on Thor's face, so ey does not look at all. Ey bars eir door at night, but Thor does not visit anyway. Ey clenches eir hands around disappointment over Thor choosing to learn eir moods _now_.

Midsummer's Day proper dawns blinding-bright, the air sticky with moisture, overcome with heat. There is no breeze. 

Loki dresses lightly and goes to the bathing chambers, where ey gathers a bucket of fresh water and carries it to eir room. Ey lies down on the floor of eir chambers, allowing the metal to seep away some of the heat, and drinks water to combat the rest. Ey does not spell emself cool: it would only tire em, when ey will be awake until late tonight with the revelries. If any have the energy for them, or the desire to be so close to a fire.

It goes on. The evening meal is held outside of the city halls, no great feast but rather a rustic banquet, and the fire blazes too brightly even for the summer-folk Æsir . Loki, wearing barely more than the warriors who dance, is too close to the fire for eir own preference, but ey is still farther than most of those present.

Ey watches the dancing, the light sparking from skin and the sweat, the heat-tiredness of the warriors, and thinks that even fire must eventually die down into cold ashes.

 _When it has consumed all in its reach, perhaps,_ ey adds darkly.

Thor and his companions spend much of the night sitting also with Loki; this time, the courtiers circulate to Thor, who stays seated, as though already ruler of his own lesser court. Loki passes the time freezing bowls of berries and eating them one by one, and watching the visiting nobles flinch at the sight of ice slivering out from the tips of Loki's fingers until the fruit is swollen with cold.

After most have left, whether to their proper beds or to fuck elsewhere in the forest, or merely slumbering with drink where they sit, Thor rises from the ground and says, "I am for bed, I think." He steals a handful of berries from Loki and eats one, then another.

The two women at Fandral's sides ease him up. "So are we," they say, not unkindly; he laughs, drunkenly fond, and the three of them sway towards the castle. Loki, uncharitably, doubts that Fandral is even capable of performing in his current state. Perhaps the women are for each other, and Fandral is only a guise.

Sif rolls to her feet. "I neglected my training this morn," she says. 

Thor glances at Hogun - Volstagg left long ago, alluding vaguely to wanting to spend the night with his children, though Loki thinks more likely his wife - and then says to Sif, "I will escort you, since that is on my way. Hogun?"

"No thank you." Hogun spent much of the night checking his blades, and he carries a truly impressive array for someone whose weapon of choice is a mace, for nicks, though Loki suspects it was more for show. Thor is grandiose, either born to dramatic displays or trained to it by his position; his companions are as much acts as they are truth. Nor is Loki innocent of this, but at least ey does so consciously.

When Thor is out of earshot, Loki pushes the bowl towards Hogun and says nothing. Hogun ignores it in favor of running his thumb across the span of the blade's flat, checking for irregularities to polish away. 

"I marvel that you can see in this darkness," Loki says finally. Eir own vision is better suited to lower light than the Asgardian day, but full night is too much even for em.

Hogun hisses and sets the blade aside, sucking at his finger where he cut himself. Loki smirks. 

Hogun puts away the knives he had inspected, separate from the ones he had not, then stands. "Throne-Child," he says, nodding in Loki's direction. 

Loki waves him away and sits long enough to finish eir berries. The night is still hot, insects droning loudly in the trees, the fire beginning to lower, growing smoky. Loki is nearly ill with heat, eir skin damp with sweat and muggy air. It will be cooler inside the palace.

Ey makes eir way there, down the corridors towards eir chambers, where some servant has already set out a large ewer of water. It is so heavy that Loki's hands would be unsteady with it, so ey kneels on the floor, sets eir lips to the rim and tilts it to drink. Ey feels dried-out despite the humidity, but the water helps.

Ey rises and undresses, filling the bathtub with lukewarm water: it will not go colder than that. Ey lies in the blood-warmth of the water and resists the urge to go to the weaving-halls to make something that would plunge Asgard into never-ending winter. It would never work, anyway: ey has not the strength for it.

Ey draws down the temperature of the water emself and lets eir head drop onto the edge of the tub, closing eir eyes.

Ey wakes to a knocking on the door. Thor. Ey ties a knot in a loose strand of hair to open the door and gets out of the bath, opening the plug so it will drain. Ey does not bother to dry emself.

Thor, still dressed only in the loose loincloth of the Midsummer dancing, sits easily on the edge of eir bed, as though he owns it - and, in truth, why should he not?

"What are you weaving?" he asks, gesturing to the loom. 

"Single-use workings." Ey sweeps eir hair out of eir face. "They are activated by being unwoven, rather than tied, as is the usual custom."

"I have never heard of them before."

Loki declines to raise an eyebrow. "That is not an unusual state of affairs."

Thor grins at em as though they are sharing an intimate jest. "It is rare, is it not?"

"It is." Loki sits down on the edge of the bed, within arm's length of Thor but not much closer. "The philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of seiðr are devoted to knowledge of the future, and to choosing and bringing into effect those elements which support a desired outcome: creation, weaving together.

"It is not more powerful to bring about effects through destruction, in seeing an undesired outcome as the most likely possibility and working to unweave its effects. But for small workings, it's effective enough, and doesn't require that I betray my abilities by always wearing a brace of ropes and a staff."

Thor lies back on the bed. "Subterfuge," he says. Loki isn't sure if the note to his voice is disapproval.

"Discretion," ey corrects anyway, lifting eir hand to draw attention to the blue of eir skin. "I'm already a stranger in your land. Worse yet to be sorcerer-coward as well."

Thor takes hold of eir hand, pulling Loki down to the bed so he can kiss eir palm. He, too, is sticky with sweat.

"You do not hide yourself in illusion, pretending to be Æsir. That is also courage."

Loki snorts. "I'm not ashamed of myself. It's different from prudence."

"Sometimes you lack that, as well," Thor jibes, but he licks at the inside of eir wrist, then shifts forward to kiss the softness within eir elbow.

"Hypocrite." Thor's mouth is only slightly wetter than the air, and hardly warmer. He opens easily against Loki, intent with desire but not with urgency, and Loki brings him fully onto the bed and then strips him of even his single garment. Lies above him, their bodies pressed too-hot together, and tangles eir hands in his hair, touches the bruises on his throat, strokes his chest and hips as they rock against one another.

"Wait," Thor gasps after a time, pushing Loki away slightly. "Let me -" 

Thor's fingers slipping inside em at the same time as his mouth closes around em is an electrical shock; ey shakes for a moment before regaining control of emself.

"Don't _stop_ ," ey snarls, kicking him.

Thor is gracious in this, as he is in all things when he remembers to be; and Loki has only known eir own touch within. Ey finishes quickly, and has to look away from Thor's smug, self-satisfied grin, up at the ceiling. 

The bed shakes as Thor lies down beside em, his skin radiating unwelcome heat even from the thumb's-length distance between them, then begins to rock as he takes himself in hand.

"The oil is above your head," Loki says. Thor's rhythm falters, then he fumbles at the head of the bed. Loki sits up, crouching over him, and takes the vial when it is offered.

Thor opens for em easily this time, and offers more, voice thick with desire and half-drunk with night; Loki, reawakened, accepts. It is as though eir whole body becomes charged with power, a thousand twisting lengths of wire and a lodestone, eir spine turned electric with the pleasure of it. Thor's chest heaves beneath em, his hands hot against eir back, and Loki presses into him once more, trembling. 

Thor meets em the third time, and the fourth, and Loki does not make it further than that. Power surges through eir skin, seeking ground, and as ey spills within, Thor bellows his own release.

Loki opens eir eyes to find that it is raining, a sudden torrential downpour, and the bed is singed black beneath eir hands and knees.

"Well," ey says, dropping onto Thor, unready yet to withdraw. "I did not expect that."

"You are not hurt?"

"No." Loki closes eir eyes. The rain is still falling. _Sensitivity to the potential in the storm,_ perhaps, ey thinks, and only realizes ey has spoken aloud when Thor strokes along eir spine.

"You can look in the library tomorrow," he suggests.

+++

The library is useless. The study of seiðr is not one usually undertaken by the Æsir, so its resources are few. The Vanir are more experienced in it, and would have more volumes, but ey does not live in Vanaheim, nor does ey truly have free passage between the realms.

It is not that ey channeled lightning in eir pleasure. It is that ey has never done it before: not in all the times ey lay with Angrboða to give em children. Even the once that the storm raged through the iron-wood, spitting ice against the walls in its fury, that did not happen.

Ey emerges from the library, understanding nothing more than ey did before, in early evening. The rain still falls, though less than it did before, and it is cooler now, nearly enough to verge on comfort. 

Ey stands in the palace garden and lets the water fall into eir upturned palm, first filling it and then dribbling over. Eir hair grows wet, eir clothes clinging. The air feels cooler this way.

There is a bench not too much further into the garden, so ey walks past a tree, yet-small green apples growing on its branches, and sits. Across from the bench is small patch of some herb, Loki knows not the name, its scent grown thick in the rain. 

Ey falls asleep there, and wakes near the evening meal. The rain stopped some time ago, but the sky is still dim with clouds, the air cool.

+++

The sky is not clear the following day, though the clouds begin to lighten; the day after, thunder rumbles in the distance at frequent intervals all morning, disappears around noon, and returns with a full-fledged storm come evening. Loki sleeps easily that night, for all that ey spends the entirety of it in Thor's bed, first in sex and then in slumber.

The week following is no better. Soon there is talk of the dark sky and frequent rains as being a danger to the crops, and Thor is called to meeting after meeting. Loki weaves, and talks the librarian into requesting several volumes on seiðr from Vanaheim, and sits under the rain in the gardens while the plants wilt around em.

The books come. They are heavy-bound, a whole box full of them, each one enchanted against damage and against theft. Loki begins to read.

That night, Thor dozing heavy at eir side, Loki notices that the rain has stopped, the sky beginning to clear from the heavy storm that was outside the windows barely an hour ago. For the first time since before Midsummer ey can see the stars, spiraling out against the cold of space. So long before the power to travel between them emself is in eir grasp, Thor's stubbornness the only -

Eir skin flushes hot with realization.

"Idiot," ey snarls, rolling out of the bed, standing against the window. Resting eir fists against the glass. Idiot not to have seen it from the first, and a proud fool to see emself in it. _It is passing strange that you have no natural skill with seiðr, given your blood._ Ey said it emself.

It cannot be undone, this opening, but Thor has not the training to control himself, nor will he seek it, out of fear of being unmanned in the eyes of his people. Nor can Loki go to the All-Father and say _I have buggered your son, and made him a sorcerer of storms._

"Loki?" Ey turns. Thor is watching em with eyes still heavy with sleep, his mouth a half-smile of fondness. "What woke you?"

Half-unwilling Loki returns to him. "I have realized what is making the storms," ey says.

"Oh?" Thor is alert now, eyes full open.

"You," ey says.

Thor laughs. "I am no sorcerer, hands full of threads."

Loki raises eir eyebrows. "Among the Æsir it is called _womanish_ , and _argr_ ," ey points out, and watches Thor's face shift from pleasant humor, amused by Loki's foolishness, to first disbelief and then horror. New-made clouds rumble above them.

"I -" Thor says, then falls silent.

+++

Loki bathes to cover up the smell of sex lingering on eir skin, dresses again, and goes out into the hall. 

On eir way to the Queen's chambers, ey meets one of the Einherjar guards, who says, "Throne-Child!"

"What?"

"Heimdall wishes to speak to both you and Prince Thor, as soon as is your pleasure." 

Loki's belly tightens. So Heimdall knows. Is this also then a summons from the king? Loki has no idea what will happen if it is. It is not transgression enough to warrant breaking the betrothal and the peace treaty - or it would not be, to the Jotun, who have no horror of seiðr. What punishment, then, for em, for what all will assume was eir aggression against Thor's innocence, that ey tricked eir way into Thor's body as ey tricks the laws of the worlds with eir weavings. 

"Thank you," ey says.

The Bifrost chamber glows with power, and Loki's veins shudder with current. Heimdall's armor is as much for protection against electrical mishaps as against the weapons of enemies, but it is also intimidating. Loki enters the chamber.

"Nine-Born Heimdall, guardian and watcher, carrier of the sword-key to the Bifrost, bearer of the horn that summons us all to battle: why call you me here at this hour?" ey says in greeting. 

Heimdall nods. "Your Royal Highness." It is the wrong title. Unlike the formality of the Asgardian court, it is always correct to address em as _Throne-Child_. All that is of em is given by eir parent. 

Loki thinks of correcting his thoughtlessness, then realizes the heaviness of his gaze, the sword in its sheath unfastened from his hip and resting instead on the pedestal, precariously balanced. It was not a mistake made out of carelessness; it was Loki's married title.

"I am not married yet," Loki says.

"My mistake," Heimdall says, blinking too-slowly. Loki gazes at him placidly.

Thor sweeps into the chamber as though for a council of war instead of a summons given him in the dead hours of the night.

"What is it, Heimdall? What do you see?"

"I have a gift for you, Your Royal Highness," Heimdall says. He looks at the sword.

"That key is yours," Thor says blankly. 

"I think." Heimdall says judiciously, "that the realms will be well with the Prince of Asgard learning the workings of the Rainbow Bridge, but that the harvest cannot last if you do not bear this weapon, or one like it."

Thor flushes but takes the sword from him. "Have you told my father?"

"I did not know what had caused it until tonight."

Thor finishes belting the sword to his hip.

"It will not work unless you unsheathe it and touch the blade with both hands at once," Loki says quietly. Thor glances at em, but does not take the sword out. Loki has a half-mad enraged thought of forcing Thor to his knees right there, dragging his hands to the blade and then fucking his mouth, but of course ey stays emself. 

+++

Loki has to insist twice more that night before Thor will touch the blade, and then it is - it is as though, for a moment, the power is leached from eir blood, so strong is the field that the blade takes on. 

Ey returns to eir own chambers and sleeps uneasy, and wakes to summer heat and a clear sky. 

+++

Within the day the court begins to talk: Crown Prince Thor, bearing the sword that is key to the Bifrost, but Heimdall not disgraced, nor away from his post. Loki hears the speculation at the noon meal, where ey slips into eir shadow-self and listens to the whispers at the lower part of the table.

Thor is with his father that afternoon, whether in conference or explaining his newfound power Loki does not know. Ey weaves. This one for silence, this for fleetness of foot, this one for fire. Against hunger, against fatigue, against pain. 

+++

Not long before the evening meal Thor knocks on the door to eir chambers; Loki lets him in, but it is Thor who closes it. He wears the sword still.

"My father and I spoke today," Thor begins, as though Loki is entirely a fool and had not realized, "and we agreed that this blade is mine, now."

Loki sits down once more at eir loom, though without picking up the shuttle. It is not the weapon itself that is so important, really, though if the All-Father wishes to pretend so he is welcome to it, and Thor is too ignorant of the theory and science behind seiðr to know the difference. 

"What will you tell your companions?"

"Does it call for an explanation?"

"Heimdall has borne that weapon for near two thousand years. It is the key to the Bifrost: why should he not still be trusted with it?" Loki presses the pedals of the loom aimlessly. Thor's wearing it implies that Heimdall is no longer trusted, and that Thor now guards the Bifrost against some secret invader. Not politically expedient. But, truly, is there any other choice? There is little enough metal like it - 

"Come to Jotunheim," ey says, before the thought has even crystallized. "Asgard is too warm for perfect conductivity in all but a few materials, but in Jotunheim it is hardly rare at all, especially in winter. It will be simple enough to find a weapon to blunt your power there."

Thor's gaze is heavy, strangely bright, upon em. "I like it better than leaving Heimdall unarmed."

Eir parent has met Thor fewer than a handful of times, and has no love for Odin at all. If Býleistr has let it be known that Thor is well fond of Loki, then ey will likely be more willing to heed a request from Loki - but there must be some pretext, something plausible that is not _I have fucked my fiancé into being a seiðr-worker and if it is not inhibited he will all-unwilling bring famine upon his lands, so will you please let him stay on Jotunheim where there is metal that will counter him?_ Loki can only imagine eir parent's face, let alone Býleistr's teasing. If only Thor had some interest that would naturally draw him to eir homeland.

"I will write my parent a letter requesting leave for you to visit Jotunheim come autumn," ey says. "If ey accepts, then you may pass the winter with me and mine."

Thor's hand rests uneasily on the hilt of the sword. "If it would not be too much trouble."

As though it will not be sweet indeed to see Thor suffer the cold seasons of Jotunheim. "None at all." Ey deliberately casts a glance up at Thor, then away. "It will be good to have you close."

+++

To most onlookers, Thor is a vivid-red shadow in the palace in Jotunheim. Wherever he goes, he stays wrapped in the cloak Loki gave him, striding between his rooms in the palace and the training halls, where he watches the fighting. 

At first Loki was surprised he was permitted there: why should they show their methods of combat to an Æsir? But it is a gesture of goodwill, entrusting Thor with the peace.

Besides, eir parent probably enjoys knowing that Thor is impressed by the strength of eir people. Thor is certainly interested enough in ice-blades, watching them form, the way in which they are wielded.

"I did not know it was so much a part of the Jotun," he says once to Loki, after Loki's own bastard training match, staff against blade. "I think I have understood something."

Sitting on the lip of eir bath, picking splinters of ice from falling during training out of eir skin, Loki cannot help but smile at his naïveté. The soul of a people is not the way in which they wage war. "What, then?"

"That you can only conceive of creation as self-sacrifice: the land gives its fruit, such as it is, to the people; and the people give themselves to their children, and of themselves to make weapons."

Loki shivers, despite the warmth rising from the bath, and then again when Thor rests his hand against the base of eir neck. "And what is creation for the Æsir , then?"

"Union."

"Self-aggrandizement," Loki corrects, and before Thor can come to his full rage, "And now you see why I do not care for your generalizations about my people, who will be yours by marriage and already are yours by your grandmother's blood."

"I did not mean it as insult."

"You meant it as honor, and that is worse."

Thor smiles, though it is only a mask over irritation. "Are you never tractable?"

Loki lets the quiet stand, watching Thor expectantly, to get the point across. Watches the memory of the night preceding steal across Thor's face.

"Betrothed," the word is heavy on eir tongue, "You will not be marrying me for my docile temper or for my beauty. Should I not match strength to strength?"

And that - that strikes, when Loki did not mean it to. Thor's hand at the back of eir neck tenses, his fingers pressing into Loki's skin. "Yes," he breathes, eyes bright, drawing Loki forward for a kiss.

Loki throws him into the bath. Thor comes up sputtering, drenched, beginning to shiver. Loki wonders vaguely if the cloak is shorted-out by water, or if the bath will warm from its influence.

"Fine," Thor growls, "Have -" but he cuts himself off, one hand coming to Loki's wrist and the other to eir elbow, dragging em down into the water, where Thor slams em against the side of the bath, his hands burning-hot on eir shoulders in the warm water. Loki mislikes being handled so, and turns Thor's elbows, breaking the pressure. Thor goes under. Up again, closer, his hand folded over Loki's throat as though to strangle em, though in truth they both know this is no way to do it. Loki takes his elbow again - foolish, to allow that opening twice - and twists his wrist, using the pressure to move Thor into the side of the bath, then standing up, moving away from him.

Thor hooks an ankle around eir calf and brings em slamming down along the wall into the water over his legs. Loki presses eir hand against Thor's upper thigh, eir elbow scraped raw and hurting with impact.

Thor draws a knee up, not enough to strike eir face, then shifts out of the way and gets out of the bath. Loki doesn't stop him; it's too cold for Thor in the water, and colder yet outside it. The cloak, still draped over the side of the bath, is dripping on the floor. His hair is bedraggled, his mouth open as he pants, his breath steaming.

"I will hardly think less of you if you walk away now," Loki says, leaning back in the water. "It is not in my nature to accuse another of cowardice."

Thor looks away. "I will see you at dinner."

"I look forward to it."

+++

Leirvor, Aurnir's heir, looks like Býleistr. It is well that Aurnir acknowledged formally, though in truth no one would think otherwise. In public they speak sweetly to each other; in private with family and friends they are nauseating. Loki and Helblindi spent years making gagging noises to each other over it, and Leirvor does the same now.

Leirvor's place at Court is liminal: child of the Throne-Heir's consort, an acknowledged gift, and heir to eir own fief in time, but never truly of Court. Loki is well sympathetic. Leirvor is still young yet, too young to be sent to Aurnir's native Langness to learn governance with eir grandparent. In a century, perhaps.

When Leirvor was small Loki would show em simple tricks: making small trinkets disappear and reappear, creating illusions while rendering the true one invisible in eir hands and allowing Leirvor to try to find it. Leirvor has not manifested any gift for seiðr, not a surprise, and has a keen, logical mind. 

Ey counts emself surprised to find Leirvor and Thor standing together on the balcony off one of the lesser receiving halls, the one with the windows facing to the west that Loki likes to sit beside and read. They are talking about training methods, of all things.

"The most basic weapon in Asgard is a pike, but it is by no means the most favored. Every man has his skills, and if it is the sword, or the mace, then so much the better: he will be stronger in that weapon for his preference," Thor says. He is wrapped up like a wraith in rainbow-flickering white cloth.

"And you can freely put them aside, and they will not be harmed?" Leirvor is watching him with wide eyes and an open breathlessness. Aurnir will never forgive Loki should Leirvor's preference in lovers be Æsir warriors.

"Indeed," Thor says. He is armed only with a simple sword here in Jotunheim; the wrapping of wire that binds his seiðr he keeps in a pouch on his other side.

"And they could be taken up by another?"

"And do not melt in the sunlight," Loki adds, stepping onto the balcony. "If only we could find some way to forge metal here without harming ourselves we might have weapons of greater tensile strength than ice."

Leirvor licks eir lips. "You could do it, with your weaving."

Thor's spine goes rigid.

"But I know nothing of smithing," Loki says kindly, "and the dwarves are not fond of me."

Thor chokes. It's been long enough since Loki cut off Sif's hair, enchanted Fandral into being unable to perform, gave Volstagg endless nausea, and made Hogun briefly unable to hold his tongue, that the incident is nearly forgotten. Besides, ey could think of no fit punishment for Thor's faults, so ey made him clumsy, unable to hold a weapon, tripping over his own feet. Even then he took it with good-natured annoyance, as a jest should be taken; it was his friends' troubles that angered him.

Leirvor leans forward. "Didn't we forge metal once, before the Casket was stolen from us?"

"Mind your tongue," Thor says, and Leirvor goes pale.

"War-spoils," Loki says dismissively. "Taking it was an act of pillage upon a grieving world." The Casket, of course, ey should have thought of it before. Ey has no desire to bring it back to Jotunheim - that would only fashion another war, unnecessary - but the Æsir have no use for it, none at all. But Loki does, and could, and - what could ey _not_ weave, with the Casket cradled between eir palms? Ey licks eir lips, mouth watering.

Thor's jaw is tight. "It was to preserve the peace."

"Fatuous vengeance: would you burn the fields behind the walls of the Asgardian capital and sow them with salt? Would you strip from every archer the string of eir bow, every smithy eir steel, every warrior eir weapon? You, who is gracious in victory?"

"I am gracious when I trust the honor of my opponent," Thor bites out.

Loki hits him. "You dare call your hosts treacherous," ey snarls, "you who comes pleading and whimpering into our court, stinking of your own shame and hatred of us, who thinks emself debased to be in our presence, to eat at our table!"

"It is what you have done all your summers in Asgard!" Thor's hands clench at his sides, one on the sheath of his sword.

"Come, then, show me how the Æsir throne-heir shows respect to the monsters in whose bed ey sleeps." Loki holds open eir hands, goading. "Show me how you trust us and our honor."

There is a soft cry, and Leirvor is clinging to em, a child's warmth. "Loki, Loki," ey whimpers, "Stop, ey will kill you."

Loki draws emself up. "He will not," ey says, "because the murder of his betrothed would end the peace entirely, and he would not live to return to Asgard. Which he shall be doing. Immediately. Go tell Býleistr to send a message to Asgard that its heir is returning early, and in disgrace."

Leirvor flees. Loki and Thor stand there, glaring at each other, heaving for breath.

"If a warrior gave me such insult I would challenge him," Thor says finally.

Loki looks him up and down. "I shall see you in Asgard in three days, then, for the insult given my people."

Thor's jaw clenches. "You are outmatched."

"I do not think it unfair that I should bring weaving into the match when you cannot _but_ bring seiðr."

Thor's throat works, as though he wishes to deny it, but he says nothing, and then there are guards around them, there to escort Thor to the Bifrost site.

+++

Ey kneels before eir parent and stares at the floor.

"You wish to go to Asgard in three days," Laufey repeats.

"Yes."

"For what purpose?"

"In response to an insult offered by the Asgardian heir against the people of Jotunheim."

"A holmgang."

"Yes." Loki is allowed the right to drop eir parent's titles, but ey still feels eir authority.

"On what terms?"

"They weren't set," Loki admits.

"Rash."

Loki does not let eir head drop any further and holds silent.

"You call the prince a child, eager for combat," Laufey says, "but I see before me a child who has challenged eir own betrothed to a duel. You will go to Asgard and fight, to blood only. And then I will hear no more of this rashness, else I will seek conference with that creature on the throne in Asgard and see you married come summer, that neither of you may endanger the peace any more than you already have. You may go."

"My liege," Loki says, bowing again, and departs, eir belly hot with shame and anger. Ey swallows against it. If Laufey had been there, had heard the insult Thor offered, ey would not be so harsh in judging Loki.

And the greater shame is that ey is tempted: once married, Thor will have no excuses in bed, and ey will be able to reach a greater height of power. That would almost make up for the loss of the last few winters at home. Being done the sooner with the politically necessary chore of childbirth. Oh, ey will welcome the power, but what does ey care for the children of eir body that the Æsir court will steal from em? Better the power, the pleasure of control.

But with Thor withholding eir children, Loki cannot seek greater strength. Unless. Loki's fingers curl into eir clothing. Where would the All-Father keep his trophies but in the chamber behind his throne room, the treasure hall? Whom other than himself would he entrust with so powerful an artifact, when so few are capable of comprehending its power?

Let Thor and all the other Æsir believe Loki come for holmgang, child's play for a warrior's fragile honor. 

+++

Ey arrives in Heimdall's watchpost in armor, half-woven and half-forged. Ey bears only one small weaving scrap; to use them in the duel would be dishonorable in truth. For that ey carries a span of rope, another of thread, and eir distaff.

Heimdall is there, bearing his sword. Thor is not.

"Nine-Born," Loki acknowledges.

"Throne-Child. His Royal Highness has proposed that you would find me an acceptable judge for the match."

Loki expected nothing else. "He is correct."

"He has agreed that the match be to third blood, as you proposed, and has accepted that your challenge invokes both sorcery and physical combat: the sword to him, the staff to you."

Has Thor told all the watchers that he was forced by honor to permit the use of seiðr in that ring? Heimdall knows, of course, and likely Thor's father has thought of it. Has Frigga? How it must burn to have his bearer and giver think him deviant.

"I will go to the field, then, and prepare," Loki says.

"I shall join the match when it is to begin, but I cannot leave my post before then." Heimdall remains on the dais as Loki walks past him. Through the halls. 

Ey tears the weaving that ey had with em, feels eir skin ripple with energy and silence, and moves towards the throne room.

The door to the treasure room is guarded by two warriors, but Loki ties a knot and sends them spilling into time-blindness, their vision held on a still image. It will not last long; it plays on a trick in the mind, the workings of the eyeball, but it will hold long enough.

The door nearly floats open beneath eir hands.

There are two or three score treasures there at first glance; Loki is sure there are more, hidden in secret chambers within the room. Curious, ey walks past a gleaming jewel set on a velvet bed; a well from which drips a stream of water that fills troughs in the floor; a small bronze mirror, which when Loki looks does not show eir reflection. A number of weapons: swords aplenty, a hammer, a long spade with a crescent blade at the other end, a staff or three. A case full of jewelry.

The Casket glows with power from its space, nestled close to the wall. Loki goes to stand before it, and thinks, _What could I **not** weave_ \- before the door slams open.

"So you accept the naming of coward, and of being without honor," Heimdall says softly, "in abandoning the holmgang to steal, and bring us all to war."

Loki could scream with rage. Ey breathes in, once. "The last thing I want is war," ey says. "I wanted to see it, to see what my people have lost."

Heimdall's armor flickers in the light. "You would have used it. To what purpose."

Curiosity is no answer at all, and neither is the lie: destroying the Bifrost, and thereby ending the means by which Asgard bends its will upon the other realms.

"To bring forges back to Jotunheim," ey says. 

A long moment of silence. "You will not go to the match, then."

"What gain is there for me in going? If I do not win the insult is upheld, and I cannot win except by means that are viewed as trickery and cowardice among the Æsir. If the ending is the same whether I fight or not..."

"That you made the attempt will look well."

What use has Loki for the goodwill of people who will only think well of Loki if ey changes emself to fit Æsir modes of behavior? They believe that the only possible good mode of being is being Æsir.

"I would rather this."

"You will not have it."

Loki is shaking with the closeness of it, the bright pure cold. "If I gain it you will not be able to stop me."

"If you meant to seize it before I could strike you you would not say that." Heimdall takes two steps forward; Loki two back, and then there is someone coming, a fast loud gait, _Thor_.

Loki sets eir hand on the Casket and feels power bloom in eir hands, eir skin frosting over. Ey hears the vibrations in the floor, the conductivity of the walls. "Prince Thor," ey says, "In here," and means to freeze both Thor and Heimdall, but then Thor is in the room, roiling with power, and something - something in the room keens, current screaming in Loki's flesh, burning eir veins.

Ey freezes Heimdall anyway, through the pain, and tries to do the same to Thor, who shakes eir power off as though made of iron, or, or, 

Ey cannot hear anything, and realizes, from the flow of fields in the room, that Thor is touching em. If his touch is violent ey cannot tell. 

Ey seizes the lines of the world, the cold spaces between them, and takes emself and Thor and the screaming thing away, into the darkness, towards the cold.

+++

Loki comes to emself lying in a frozen field on Jotunheim, ey knows not where. Thor is curled into em, his cloak wrapped around himself, and Loki is cold with Jotunheim's winter. There is an object lying not too far from them, half-buried in cracked ice.

Loki staggers over to it. It is too heavy to lift, so instead ey pulls away the ice from around it. A war-hammer, ornamented with swirling knotwork. It vibrates faintly with current when Loki touches it, as though warning em away.

The Casket did not come with them. Loki stares at eir fingers, remembering the way ey felt the vibration of the worlds, the waving of the branches of the Tree. Lost to em now.

Ey leaves the hammer and sits next to Thor, breathing warmth onto eir hands and shaking his shoulder.

Thor wakes easily, sits up. Makes to go for his weapon but instead shivers so deeply that he cannot unsheathe it. "Why did you bring me here?"

Loki, too, is cold. Winter in Jotunheim is too much even to those native to it. "I could hardly stay in Asgard after failing to carry out my own defense, and invading the treasure room besides."

Thor crouches on the ice, curling up in his cloak for warmth. "Is that what you did?"

"It hardly matters." There are heavy clouds gathering, though there is no lightning, not yet. At least this represents a warming: full winter in Jotunheim is too cold for snow. "I am uncertain of where we are, but we both need shelter."

Thor stands, moving to the weapon in the ground. "You brought this as well," he says, reaching for it.

"It's too-" Loki begins, then falls silent as Thor picks it up easily, as though it weighs no more than any other war-hammer.

Thor ties the hammer to his belt and comes to stand beside Loki. "Where to, then?"

"I am not sure." Loki rubs eir hands together, then thinks better of the gesture and ties a few knots for warmth. It will last long enough. 

North is easy enough to find, but Loki has no idea where they are, and to head in the wrong direction would be no good at all. What good is going east, or west, if there is nothing to the east or to the west for many days? 

"We are sure to find something, no matter which way we go."

"Our deaths, perhaps." Loki paces slowly in a circle, trying to feel something, anything of life. It is not one of eir skills, not yet, possibly not even after -

Ey glances at Thor, then again. There are some foothills not far from where they are, and if they use the hills as a respite from the wind perhaps ey could persuade Thor to lie down with em, give em greater power in hopes of saving both their lives.

The hammer swings quietly against Thor's hip. Perhaps it would work, but Thor might not forgive em. And once done it could not be hidden. Loki refuses to hide behind coils of seiðr-wire.

Another circle, Thor turning with as he watches, and Loki shivers briefly with a brush of cold air. Ey never expected to miss Midsummer in Asgard. Unthinkable. To wish to be dancing at Court while expecting the pleasure of Thor in eir bed afterwards.

Third circle, and the ice is beginning to melt between eir feet, before ey remembers the dancing, the sweep of the figures of the women in circles and squares, turning within weavings. The pattern in time, woven with bodies in motion. Loki has already drawn the circle and Thor its center.

Ey steps inside and holds out eir hands. "Dance with me."

"To what purpose?"

"To craft a weaving." Loki forces a smile. "You have done worse than dance with me, betrothed."

Thor's hand is hot on eir waist. His cloak sweeps the ice, growing wet, and his cheeks are flushed, but he holds tightly to Loki as ey guides them both, turning here, waiting there, the lines of their bodies' motion drawing tighter together. Loki feels made of electricity, drawn up from the ground and down from the sky. Thor's fingers are gentle against eirs.

Bare steps from completing the weaving that will fray into threads that will seek out other Jotun and then tug the two of them forward towards life, Thor leans forward and murmurs into Loki's ear, "I feel your magic traveling through me."

"And it pleases you to be helpless against my strength," Loki responds, and closes the tie. Thor goes bright with current against em for an instant, half-blinding. Loki's palms are burnt, eir muscles aching.

"That way," Thor says, before even Loki can, and begins to walk.

+++

The storm holds off all through their walking, three nights. On the fourth they encounter a fortress, not one that Loki recognizes, though there are many fiefs that Loki has never visited.

They have not eaten since they came to Jotunheim, and Loki's head pounds with it, eir belly quiet and all the brightness of the sky, the sound of the wind, conspiring against em, driving em into pain. Sleep helps, but not enough. Ey yearns for quiet and darkness and, at moments, something to eat.

Thor is merely enduring it, in some private mode where he is sufficient unto himself, like some sort of beast. Loki has not spoken to him in a day and a half.

They walk up to the gate, which opens before them. There are three soldiers, in armor, with weapons held ready at both Loki, and at Thor.

"Identify yourselves," says the lead one. 

"Loki Laufeysbairn, and Prince Thor, Odinson, of Asgard," Loki says. "We have been in the ice-fields for three days and three nights, and we seek shelter."

There is, of course, fuss. There is some nonsense about having them verify who they are - Thor has only to show his armor, coated with the seals of his house that glow with power, and Loki as sorcerer, with eir own markings, and known to be betrothed to the heir to Asgard, is proof enough.

They are given a meal, and two beds to sleep upon. In the morning they will have mounts, provisions, and a compass and map. Word has been sent on the roads that they are riding for Court.

Loki eats little, but it eases eir pain somewhat, and when ey wakes in the morning eir head only aches with old muscle-tension, the leftovers of the pain, like a fading scar.

+++

After Eystvöll is Hravnskarð, then Störrvatn. At each one Thor is treated with deference, and he behaves with respect; Loki hardly believes that this Thor is the one ey has always known. Perhaps the ice has addled him, or he realizes that his position is precarious, surrounded by Jotun. Although Heimdall likely knows where they are, it is some work to alter the Bifrost's target location, and Odin will hardly bring them back by the secret ways. Showing him a lesson, perhaps.

Loki uses the time to ingratiate emself with their hosts, and declines to explain how the two of them came to be in the Eastern Tundra. Thor, in some newfound tact, does not say either. 

By Brattklief, it has been nearly three weeks in Jotunheim, and they have not fucked since the day Thor insulted eir people. Thor has made no advances - not that there has been much opportunity, often at feasts until late at night, and with people around to see unseemly conduct - how Loki misses the freedom to be rebellious and willful, which ey had carved out in Court society here and in Asgard! But this far from Court ey represents not only emself but the throne, and to behave badly would harm eir parent and Býleistr - there has been no chance, not even on the roads, where they are escorted.

Loki weaves emself unremarkability that night at Brattklief and goes to the chamber where Thor sleeps. Knocks on the door.

Thor opens it, naked, eyes hooded with sleeping. There is a fire going in the hearth, too hot by Jotun standards, keeping the room Æsir-warm. The air rolls out from the slitted-open door. "What is it?"

"Nothing. Let me in."

The room is even more uncomfortable inside, and barely gets better as Loki strips. Thor is already lying down on the bed, watching em, strangely passive. His hands rest steady on the sheets.

"I am grateful," Thor says finally, when Loki is down to eir smallclothes, "that so many fiefs have shown us hospitality."

"What other choice do they have? They owe fealty to my parent, and you are heir to our conqueror."

"Yes," Thor says, contemplatively. Loki is finally naked. "But if that is so, they bear it with good grace. Where I have heard things said of you, that are not..."

"I know what is said of me."

Thor's arms are heavy around em, his palm spread wide across the space between eir shoulder blades. Loki, sweating, uncomfortable in the heat of Thor's room, presses closer, the faster to have what ey wants. Thor is eager, incautious with his strength, and Loki is vicious with desire. It is as always. Loki does not think they will ever soften towards each other, grow worn with each other's sharp points, friction and heat wearing down into a lasting marriage. 

Perhaps they are too powerful to grow cold like all other things in the universe must. Loki would like that.

+++

Býleistr meets them at Stórrvarða, with three guards. The moment they are in a room, away from the fief's people, Býleistr says, "Loki."

"Yes?"

And Býleistr hits em.

"That is not your punishment," ey says, as Loki glares hot enough to maim. "That is for the example you failed to show Leirvor."

"I am no example to any, and those who think me one are fools."

Býleistr laughs, bitter. "You have been in the far reaches of Jotunheim for near a month," ey says, "and have missed all the strife you yourself have caused. I am well owed that blow, and would take another but for that you are my sibling."

"Then take another," Loki spits. "I will not have your pity."

"Leave off," Thor says, coming to stand beside em. "He loves you."

"Ey," Býleistr corrects lightly. Loki does not know how ey can do it. "Prince Thor. I am sorry you had to see that."

"What trouble has there been?"

"Surely you have not forgotten that I failed to appear for a duel with you in order to invade Asgard's treasure room to get to the Casket of Ancient Winters, and in the doing steal you to the wastes of Jotunheim?"

"For nearly a week we were under the threat of war," Býleistr says. "You were sent to Asgard to prevent that."

Loki moves to a chair, sits. "It has been more than a week."

"No thanks to you." 

Loki waves a dismissive hand. "I have always been jealous of your tours."

Thor lays a hand on eir shoulder. "You need not be so argumentative."

Loki shrugs him off. "Nothing is accomplished by being docile but remaining condescended-to." To Býleistr, "You met with the Asgardians, then. What was decided?"

Býleistr's eyes flick over to Thor. "You will be returning to Asgard to account for your actions. The decision will be made when you have spoken for yourself."

That is...fairer than Loki expected. For all that in Asgard ey is not only thought, but now known as, a coward. They can hardly demand Helblindi in exchange for Loki, not when Thor's honor will forbid it, and anyway Loki is far more dangerous than eir sibling. Helblindi is intelligent with years of being read to because of eir too-weak eyes, and has a memory for both sums and poetry, and a fine singing voice. If ey had not been a gift of the throne, ey would have been a fine skald. But ey is no seiðr-worker.

Odin would have to be a fool to allow Loki to leave Asgard. He will likely demand the marriage be made sooner, to cement Loki's loyalties, that ey be cast out of Jotunheim forever. Also to work towards the production of Thor's heirs: Odin knows, even if Thor does not, that Loki will only and ever view eir children's loyalty to Asgard as having been stolen, and work to make them kind toward eir parent's land. Loki would not abandon eir own flesh.

"Very well," ey says. "When do we leave?"

+++

Upon eir arrival at court, ey goes into conference with eir parent, giver, and siblings. 

"Idiotic," Fárbauti says, lurking behind Laufey's seat. "Your weaving doesn't excuse you from bad behavior."

"Some in Asgard might say it's the cause," Helblindi murmurs, not unamused. 

"I make my own decisions."

Býleistr sighs. "So you do."

"The Asgardians wish to have you account for yourself," Laufey says, "as both Býleistr and I were asked to speak upon a truth-stone and swear that we did not urge you on to seek the Casket."

Loki's chest flares. No wonder Býleistr's rage. Making the Throne of Jotunheim testify to eir own truth as though a common criminal - "They had no right." 

"What is _right_ when one has the power to enforce one's will, and the certainty of one's own convictions?" Laufey says. "Think on what is asked of you and why, and the roles your actions impose on the rest of us." 

Loki swallows down _You gave my cunt away to our conquerors_ , knowing it to only prove Laufey's point. It wasn't eir fertility that Odin sought, not really, though that was a convenient excuse. The Vanir fosterlings are proof enough. Ey would have been taken to Asgard anyway, with eir parentage and eir weaving-skill. At least ey has had the time in Jotunheim to know emself truly.

"I did not mean for it to be taken for an attempt to reclaim the Casket. I meant to make that clear, once I was done, but something happened that prevented it."

"What?"

"You will recall how Odin is known to be a great seiðr-worker, and how Frigga is a weaver of great skill, her abilities hinted at but never seen?"

Helblindi makes a noise. "You awakened it in Thor."

Loki dips eir chin in acknowledgement and ignores the look on eir parent's face, mingled amusement and irritation. "He's powerful, but without control, and it would shame him to know that any others knew. He found me in the treasure room, and I was braced against his power, but there are other artifacts there, and one of them - well, one of them answered to him, all unknowing. That I had not expected, and it destroyed my concentration and my plans. So I brought him here."

"That is why you brought him here before, then," Býleistr says.

"Yes."

"Is that what you will tell Odin?" 

Loki smiles. "It's a possibility. If it were to become public..."

Fárbauti taps two fingers against the frame of Laufey's chair, then leaves them there. "What goal did you have in going to that room at all?"

Laufey strokes at the back of eir spouse's hand. "Irrelevant. Ey may speak some lie or other; it matters not, and truth-stones do not work on weavers of strength such as eirs. I am more concerned with what truth Odin will choose to hear, and what action he will take to it."

"Odin will not harm em," Helblindi says, leaning back in eir chair.

"No?" Býleistr challenges. "You are unwarrantedly certain."

Helblindi laughs. "He will not, because Thor loves Loki."

Loki's belly goes cold and painful, eir skin tingling with it.

Laufey's gaze is heavy upon em. "You do not disagree."

Ey wants suddenly to be away from here. "I don't." Ey had felt it, had acknowledged Thor's so-called fondness even to emself. But ey had never thought _love_ \- it is not a thing to be thought, between them, between their peoples. It's wrong that Helblindi should name it before Loki can. It's wrong that anyone but Loki should think to use it against Thor. 

Loki rests an elbow on the arm of eir chair, presses eir fist against eir mouth as though in thought instead of in sudden pain. 

"I told them it was to bring forges back to Jotunheim," ey says. "To make metal, as we have not been able, for so long."

Býleistr makes a soft noise. "That is what Leirvor meant."

Loki nods, slowly. "It need not be true. But that is what I told Heimdall."

"Is there iron here?" Helblindi says vaguely. "I thought it was all imported from Alfheim. And what would we use it for, anyway?" Ey gestures to the walls. "We have palaces and weapons, and food when the seasons pass well, and water abundant, and music and song. If our seiðr-workers are dead with the war, or weak with the Casket's loss, what matter?"

"Tell me, sibling," Býleistr murmurs, "why it is that each fief calls its year's debt of labor from its vassals in late autumn."

Helblindi is silent.

"Asgard will never allow it." Fárbauti pulls eir hand from eir spouse's, moves to lean over the back of eir own chair. "Even with the Casket guarded, they would not. Besides, whence the iron? All of Jotunheim's is buried beneath the Eastern Tundra."

"If we had the Casket it would be simple to bring it forth," Laufey says. "But we do not, and I suspect the only seiðr-workers alive who would be capable of it are Loki and the Weaver of the Iron Wood."

Helblindi smirks. "Or eir children."

"They are not -" Loki stops emself. "There is no weaving there."

Býleistr seems to accept this. "What punishment will Odin give, then? If Loki meant it not for war."

"Does it matter?" Helblindi says easily. "The punishment cannot be much, because Thor loves em too well; and it cannot be public, because Odin cannot control Loki's tongue, and Loki has the power to discredit Thor utterly before Asgard. In this, we are ahead."

Fárbauti shakes eir head. "Think as your opponent thinks, not as you idealize your opponent to think." The old warning, since they were children. Fárbauti may be only Laufey's spouse but ey is a strategist in eir own right, albeit keener with goods and numbers, rational actors, than with the minds of others.

"He will want to know whether I used the premise of the challenge to gain entry to the treasure room," Loki begins, slowly. "Or if it was a sudden whim." Ey raises eir eyes from the floor. "He does not know what I will say to that, but he will ask what I wanted to do with it. What I say to that will change what follows. If I say, _I did not think that far_ , he will not believe me. If I say, _To steal it,_ he will. If I say, _To bring the forges home_ , he will think me idealistic, and a fool." Ey clasps eir hands together on eir lap. "If I give him cause to ask why my intentions were not successful, I will tell him all the truth. Can he know that the weapon responded so powerfully to Thor's seiðr? I am not certain. But he does know that I have the power to name Thor _argr_ , and to do so demonstrably truthfully, before the Asgardian people, and that is a great risk indeed. He will not speak to me before others, not without holding over me some fact that would make its revelation the more dangerous for me than for Thor."

Býleistr shifts. "Is there such a fact?"

Loki shrugs. "I do not know. All facts may be dangerous, in the right time and place."

Laufey stirs. "But some dangers are more certain than others," ey says. "You are clever, and too quick-tongued for anyone's good: you will find some way to save yourself. I can only trust that you will not harm the rest of us in the doing."

"I would not betray you."

Eir parent grimaces. "I did not say you would."

+++

Thor is in eir chambers when ey returns. He is - he is clothed in Jotun-style winter tunic and breeches, sitting straight-backed on eir bed as though aware that he is a guest. Loki, upon seeing him, does not so much think _He loves me_ as feel struck through by shame and longing and the blood-deep knowledge of it.

Ey should be happy, to have this new leash with which to turn Thor to eir own purposes.

"How went the meeting?" Thor asks, turning towards em. 

Loki kisses him instead of answering.

+++

Loki is escorted not to a public receiving hall but rather to a lesser chamber within the palace, meant for private conferences. Ey is not surprised.

The chamber is occupied by both Odin and Frigga, which is a surprise. They sit easily on comfortable couches, in only semi-formal Court clothes, but Gungnir leans against the couch-arm, ready to Odin's hand. 

Ey bows.

"Loki," Frigga sighs, from her chair.

Half the power of a quick tongue is knowing when to hold it.

"I told you once," Odin says, "that were you to act in wilful defiance in Asgard again, that you would be punished. I do not break such vows. The crime was committed here, and I see no reason not to exact that punishment here, albeit with deference to the rank you are owed both in Asgard and in Jotunheim."

Loki holds eir breathing steady, and watches lamplight shiver across the shining floor. 

"I said you would work in the city cold-houses, but the act of breaching the treasure room is worse than a simple prank. So it must be something else."

 _Let it not be public_ , Loki thinks, faintly. _Let it not be where all of Asgard may laugh at its Heir-Consort-to-be, where in addition to their lack of respect they will learn fearlessness of me._

"You will remain here throughout the remainder of the winter, and the summer following," Odin says, "and you are barred from weaving. The weaving hall is closed to you. The loom in your chambers has been removed. You will not be given rope or thread, and if you are seen with it or anything that might act as such, it will be taken from you, and your hands bound briefly. You may not carry your staff.

"I trust," he says, "that this will help you understand the severity of what you threatened to do."

Frigga holds out her hands. "I will keep them for you," she says.

Mechanically, Loki unfastens eir distaff. Holds it in eir hands, feeling the strength of it, the echo of the power it has channeled, the notch at one end from a careless strike. It courses briefly with power when it touches Frigga's hands, and then Loki lets it go. Unties the ropes from around eir waist, lets them drop to the floor. Empties the pockets of eir coat, filled with single-use weavings and spills of thread, a wound shuttle and a pair of scissors. The floor around eir feet is bright white with fabric. Loki wonders what color the King and Queen of Asgard see.

"You may go," Odin says, once ey has finished.

The few paces to the door ache, eir whole body in pain. The door closes behind em. Eir hand goes reflexively to eir hip, and eir belly hurts anew at the emptiness there. This was not what was expected.

Thor is waiting at the door of eir chambers, pacing, his hands moving without purpose: clenching together, then in his pockets, then crossed over his chest.

"I told him not to," Thor begins, when he sees Loki.

"It doesn't matter," Loki says, opening the door. Ey doesn't close it behind em. Thor is eir ally in this, at least.

"It does," Thor says, catching em. Ey allows eir shoulders to be held for a moment, then pulls away. "I would not see you in this pain."

"Then leave."

"It would be worse to be blind of it." 

Loki sits down in the chair that was placed where the loom had been. It is comfortable, and meant only for a single occupant. "I don't need you to be witness to this for it to exist."

"No," Thor murmurs, leaning over. His hand rests hot against the side of Loki's neck. "It would exist whether I saw it or not." He opens his mouth as though to say something more, but then closes it, bowing his head. Loki thinks: _I don't know if this is for manipulation or for my heart, but it is mine either way_ , stands, and pulls Thor down with em onto the bed, curling up against him for animal comfort. Ey does not cry.

+++

Come morning, Loki wakes with the folds of Thor's clothes imprinted on eir cheek. Ey raises a hand away from Thor's side and, squinting over his shoulder, imagines tying a knot one-handed, one to conjure light. Nothing happens. Ey drops eir arm back down, frustrated. It was worth a try, at least. The theory seems sound on the surface. Perhaps it is only that more practice is necessary.

At least ey knows that dancing can serve. Surely ey can train emself to dance in combat, and then alone, and thereby work seiðr. 

+++

Thor's companions notice, and then carefully do not mention, Loki's weapon-nakedness. Likely the circumstances have been explained to them. At least they do not seem to pity em. Just as well: what did ey do that would be deserving of pity? Attempting to steal back the Casket would be worthy of any punishment in Asgardian eyes.

So Loki joins the combat training. If eir steps flicker occasionally with efforts at seiðr, if eir strikes occasionally crackle with current, then nobody seems to notice, if only because they likely do not expect it, and perhaps also because Loki is not capable yet of wielding the power successfully.

Ey fights with daggers, now, instead of a staff. Every other staff feels wrong in eir hands, empty and void. The unfamiliarity, also, inhibits eir powers.

+++

At Midwinter, before the feast, Loki teaches the Warriors Three one of the Jotun dances for this festival. Fandral learns it easily, smoothly. Volstagg is quick to learn but unsteady on his feet. Hogun - Hogun moves through it with deliberation, as though aware that it traces the path of Jotunheim's sun and moon in the sky, and the tides flowing beneath the ice. Loki did not tell them.

Thor is not there, drinking and working politics with his father's warrior-vassals.

After the feast, Loki goes outside, into the comfortable chill of Asgard's winter, and dances it alone in the garden, feeling the snow cling to eir feet, the wind blowing through the weave of eir clothes. The plants beneath the snow prick at eir skin, harmless, shattering with eir cold.

Ey comes to a stop between the trunks of two bare trees, and realizes then that Thor was watching.

"You have been using dance to work seiðr," Thor says. His expression is strange; Loki sees hurt there, but cannot read it all.

"I'm forbidden to weave," Loki says, brushing the snow from eir clothes.

"As at a loom," Thor says slowly. "You are -" He closes his eyes. His hands clench and then release. "I understand."

Loki's eyebrows rise. "You do?"

"You would not be yourself if you did not work magic, and it is not in your nature to give in when it would not be to your advantage." Thor gestures, helplessly, indicating nothing.

"Will you tell your father, then?"

Thor looks away. "It is not forbidden to dance, even in the Jotun styles."

Loki nods.

Thor takes a step forward. "I heard from Fandral that you taught the Warriors Three. Would you teach me?"

"I would." Loki reaches out, taking Thor's hand. "My people are, after all, your people too."


End file.
